INSIGHT

The Health Research Data Hub for Eye Health

About

What is INSIGHT?

INSIGHT is one of seven Health Data Research Hubs across the UK set up to speed up research for new medicines and treatments, support quicker diagnoses and potentially save lives.

What are the Health Data Research Hubs?

The seven Health Data Research Hubs are part of a four-year, £37million investment from the Government Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), led by UK Research and Innovation, to create a UK-wide system for the safe and responsible use of health-related data on a large scale.

What will the INSIGHT hub do?

INSIGHT is focused on eye health and its connection to wider health issues, including diabetes and dementia. It will use anonymised, large-scale data and advanced analytics, including artificial intelligence (AI), to develop new insights in disease detection, diagnosis, treatments and personalised healthcare.

Which organisations make up the INSIGHT hub?

The INSIGHT hub is a collaboration between six partners:

What happens next?

We will use digital innovation to make existing datasets accessible, bringing scale and efficiency to the collection and curation of anonymised data. We will invest time and resources to enhance AI systems, accelerating the pace with which they translate into patient benefit. Ultimately, our plan is to transform the way eye disease is diagnosed and managed in the UK and beyond.

We want to keep the public informed about our work at every stage, so we will be adding to this website to document our progress in a transparent and accessible way. If you would like more information about INSIGHT, you can contact us.

The INSIGHT team

INSIGHT leadership team

  • Professor Alastair Denniston, Hub Director (Consultant Ophthalmologist, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust)

  • Dr Pearse Keane, Chief Data Officer (Consultant Ophthalmologist, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust)

  • Manjit Benning, Chief Operating Officer

  • Hilary Fanning, Managing Director (Director of Research Development and Innovation, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust)

  • Karen Bonstein, Director of Patient and Public Involvement (Manager, NIHR Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre)

  • Dr Wen Hwa Lee, Director of Data Trust Advisory Board (CEO, Action Against AMD)

  • Dr Jill Hopkins, Industry Partner (Global Head - Ophthalmology Personalized Health Care, Roche)

  • Dr Cían Hughes, Industry Partner (Clinician Scientist, Google Health UK)

INSIGHT communications team

  • Helen Khan, Communications Lead, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

News

The latest news about INSIGHT, including blog pieces, articles and interviews with members of our team.

Insights into INSIGHT is a new podcast series all about INSIGHT. In the first three podcasts, presenter Dr Amit Patel meets the key people behind INSIGHT, exploring what motivates them, the challenges they face and the breakthroughs in healthcare they hope to bring about.

About the presenter:
Dr Amit Patel is an author, diversity & accessibility consultant and disability activist. When he lost his sight, he thought his world was crumbling around him. With the love of his family and Kika, his social media celebrity dog, he has learned to see the world around him in a whole new way. @INSIGHTeyehub

15 October 2020

Researchers from INSIGHT, the Health Data Research Hub for eye health, and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and are warning of the risk of reinforcing healthcare inequalities if new AI health technologies are based on unrepresentative datasets – a situation they describe as ‘health data poverty’.

1 October 2020

Professor Alastair Dennistor, Director of INSIGHT, explains how the vast numbers of images that will be available through INSIGHT will open the door to improved screening and diagnoses of eye diseases, and also how 'oculomic' services could allow medics to asses a whole range of broader health metrics at the touch of a button.

29 July 2020

Jill Hopkins is Global Head of Ophthalmology Personalized Health Care (PHC) at Roche-Genentech, one of the INSIGHT's industry partners. In this podcast interview from Fishawack Health, Jill talks about her long career fighting blindness, her work with INSIGHT and technological innovations in eye care in the wake of COVID-19.

14 July 2020

Blog post on the HDR UK website by Professor Alastair Denniston, Director of INSIGHT and Consultant Ophthalmologist

Professor Dennistor writes about the groundbreaking innovations in healthcare that can come from research using health data gathered through routine check-ups.

19 December 2019

Blog post on the HDR UK website by Professor Alastair Denniston, Director of INSIGHT and Consultant Ophthalmologist

Professor Denniston describes how the INSIGHT team are planning to use the power of health data research to improve the lives of patients and the wider public – by diagnosing earlier, getting treatment started faster, and knowing exactly which of the available treatments will be most effective.

24 September 2019