Help shape the direction of future eye research

Eye researchers at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) are looking for people to share their views in a national survey, to help focus eye research on what matters most to you.

You can complete the survey by following this link.

It is open to all eye healthcare professionals and researchers as well as patients, carers and members of the public.

Feedback from the survey will inform the top nine updated priorities across different eye subspecialties.

Answering the most important questions

Despite ongoing eye research taking place across the world, many questions remain unanswered. These include questions about the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sight loss and eye conditions.

Funding for research is limited. It is therefore important for research funders to understand which questions are most important to patients, relatives, carers and eye health professionals. This allows them to target future research to answer these.

The survey is designed to refresh the James Lind Alliance Sight Loss and Vision research priorities that were first published in 2013. It has been developed to help fine tune which of the 98 potential research questions should be taken forward as part of the refresh.

This follows a review of the existing eye research priorities by the NIHR Ophthalmology Specialty group and the UK Clinical Eye Research Strategy earlier this year.

Eye research leaders

UHS has the largest eye department and eye research centre on the south coast, and supports the greatest number of clinical trials of any trust south of London.

The eye department and clinical research team at UHS run and support multiple clinical trials. This requires a huge team effort, including research nurses, orthoptists, optometrists, imagers and trial management teams.

Over the last few years, our eye researchers have investigated treatments for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of visual lost in the western world. They have developed treatments for rare disorders like albinism, and helped create genetic testing panels for the NHS.

They have also helped to create guidelines and protocols for the clinical management of common and rare diseases. Working with national organisations, they have helped to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on eye services, such as the childhood vision screening program.

Helping produce the survey

Mr Jay Self is the national NIHR Paediatric and Neuro-Ophthalmology Clinical Study Group (CSG) Chair. He led his CSG team to create two of the nine parts of the survey in this process.

Our team of six principal investigators and their teams run numerous research studies. These include early phase drug discovery projects, developing genetic tests for the NHS and international clinical trials. These cover eight of the nine research areas included in the survey.

Mr Self, Associate Professor and Consultant Ophthalmologist, said:

“We are really proud to have helped produce this extremely important survey.

“Around 10% of NHS appointments and surgery are in eye departments, and yet vision research only receives around 1 % of medical research funding. Therefore, in addition to lobbying for more eye research funding, it is more important than ever to make sure that research is targeted to the highest priorities.

“By completing and then sharing this survey as widely as possible, you can help make sure that money and research are directed towards the real priorities of NHS users. The more voices that are heard the better.”

You can complete the survey by following this link.