Glaucoma: Building a New Future with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI), "big data," block-chain and edge computing are all ways of collecting, storing and analyzing information that, if leveraged effectively, have the potential to rapidly speed up progress in healthcare. AI, with its ability to discern patterns, correlations and trends in huge volumes of data, is among a swathe of new technologies that experts expect to have deep, revolutionary impacts across numerous sectors. Already, ophthalmologists have shown that AI algorithms can provide objective metrics, from simple photographs and optical coherence tomography (OCT), as well as quantify the amount of optic nerve damage in glaucoma. Given the speed at which AI is able to accurately work, many experts predict it will help alleviate time and resource pressures against the backdrop of an aging population – a particularly pertinent issue, given the shortage of ophthalmologists. Though research and integration of AI in healthcare is ongoing, it has the potential to transform a number of areas – including processing and analyzing biomedical, clinical and patient data; medical imaging and diagnostics; drug discovery; biomarker research; personal AI assistants; and genomics. There is also a wealth of AI research underway in retinal disease, notably the Moorfields and Deepmind collaboration – a project that is investigating the use of AI to read complex eye scans and detect more than 50 eye conditions, and identify patients who require urgent treatment. Anthony Khawaja, a Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital explains how the project came about.