Lola Solebo

Pediatric Ophthalmologist and Clinician Scientist, UCL GOS Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, UK

Make a bold prediction for the future of ophthalmology.

The rise of “oculomics,” combined with the growing recognition of the “life-course” (early influences or exposures leading to disease later in life), will see pediatric ophthalmology becoming a more popular field. This may just be wishful thinking on my part, of course.

If you weren’t an ophthalmologist, what would you be doing instead?

I’d be a world famous author living on a private island bought with the proceeds of my fiendishly well-crafted, highbrow, but incredibly accessible novels.

How do you think AI and machine learning will impact ophthalmology?

My interest is in rare disorders – collectively common, and with a disproportionate impact in childhood (the most common reason for a child to be blind in the UK is because that child has a rare disease). Rare disease will get left behind in the AI revolution because we have a lot of work to do on our data estates – but hopefully, in recognition of this and the potential gains of ML approaches in our field, we will see more collaboration and smarter approaches to the creation and storage of information, from clinical variables to imaging to patient reported outcomes.