Oculomics, Multiomics and the Future of Eye Health
- INSIGHT communications team
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
The latest edition of Acuity, the professional development journal of the College of Optometrists, explores how the eye is becoming one of medicine's most powerful windows into whole-body health, driven by rich data pipelines and AI.
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Drawing on expertise from leading clinical researchers at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL, the feature outlines how the field of oculomics is evolving to encompass other -omics such as genomics.
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Pearse Keane, Professor of Artificial Medical Intelligence at UCL, Consultant Ophthalmologist at Moorfields, and Director of the INSIGHT Health Data Research Hub, describes the impact of his team’s AlzEye data linkage project. By linking retinal imaging data from more than 350,000 Moorfields patients with corresponding NHS hospital episode statistics, the AlzEye project has created one of the world’s richest datasets for eye and systemic health research.
Over the next few years, the team will take this further, embarking on a genomics linkage project through INSIGHT. The aim is to combine large-scale retinal imaging with genetic data from UK Biobank and NIHR BioResource to explore shared genetic architecture between retinal traits and systemic diseases.
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Anthony Khawaja, Professor of Ophthalmology at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Honorary Consultant at Moorfields, highlights how genetic linkage unlocks new possibilities for disease prevention with earlier retinal screening potentially reducing long-term costs to the NHS, even as questions around how to action high-risk findings remain to be resolved.
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The field is moving towards a multiomics approach: integrating genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data alongside ocular imaging to build a richer, more precise picture of individual health.
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Read the article below by Helen Bird, kindly provided by the editors of Acuity. Please click on the image to open the article in a new window.
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