Our congratulations to this year’s Ulverscroft David Owen Award recipients, Dr Siegfried Karl Wagner and colleagues, for their study ‘Development and international validation of custom engineered and code-free deep-learning models for detection of plus disease in retinopathy of prematurity’, a retrospective study published in The Lancet in April 2023.
Accepting the award Dr Wagner said: “In this global interdisciplinary project, led by the Moorfields Reading Centre, we investigated AI-based tools for detecting a leading cause of childhood sight loss – retinopathy of prematurity. I am particularly proud that our findings have implications, not only for the screening of premature neonates in the UK and low- and middle- income countries, but also in informing fundamental medical AI research more broadly.
“The prestigious Ulverscroft David Owen Award acknowledges the impact of a pioneering global collaboration initiated and steered by Professor Konstantinos Balaskas over the past five years. I was privileged to lead the considerable collaborative efforts that resulted in our recent prestigious publication at the Lancet Digital Health – a privilege shared across communities in Brazil, Egypt, the USA and the UK.”
The annual prize, a partnership with the Ulverscroft Foundation and named in memory of former Chair David Owen, recognises high-quality research in paediatric ophthalmology and visual sciences to promote academic paediatric ophthalmology.