TL;DR

NORI, the Northern Ophthalmic Research and Innovation hub at Sunderland University, is to receive £12.2m from UK Research and Innovation to build an AI tool that reads routine eye scans for early signs of disease. It will start with diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Science minister Chris McDonald announced the funding on a visit to the hub on Thursday 5 November.

How it would work

The retina gives a view of small blood vessels and nerve tissue that NORI says can show signs of wider ill health before a patient has symptoms. The project would read ordinary eye scans alongside community data and patients’ NHS records, looking for subtle changes that point to developing disease. If the approach works, it could later be applied to dementia and stroke.

Matthew Campbell, NORI’s co-director and interim pro vice-chancellor for health, said the funding would let the team build the tool, trial it in real healthcare settings and take it to national and international markets. The Sunderland Echo reports that the hub draws on Durham’s scientific expertise alongside Sunderland’s clinical base.

Part of a wider round

NORI is among five new health hubs UKRI is funding with more than £52m, according to the Sunderland Echo. The others are based in London, Southampton and Exeter. McDonald linked the round to NHS pressure: earlier diagnosis, he said, means better outcomes for patients and a lighter load on the health service. Professor Charlotte Deane, who chairs UKRI’s engineering and physical sciences council, said earlier hubs had already produced results including AI-assisted brain tumour surgery.

Why it matters

The Echo notes that the North East has some of England’s worst health outcomes. In our view, screening at an eye test is a sensible place to try AI diagnosis: the scans are already taken routinely and in large numbers. The harder steps are linking them to health records safely and proving the tool’s accuracy across different groups of patients.

Looking Forward

This is research funding, not a deployed NHS service. Expect clinical validation, data governance and regulatory approval to come before any patient sees an AI result from a routine eye test.