There are almost two million people in the United Kingdom living with sight loss, including around 360,000 people who are registered as blind or partially sighted. Sight threatening diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and age related macular degeneration have contributed to the 40% increase in outpatient attendances in the last decade but are amenable to early detection and monitoring. With early and appropriate intervention, blindness may be prevented in many cases.

Anonymisation and pseudonymisation

This study requires existing retrospective data only; no prospective data are needed nor will be collected from patients, hospitals, or healthcare workers. No direct patient contact will occur and necessary data will be anonymized or pseudonymized from this source dataset.

Anonymisation and pseudonymization of all image files and clinical information is performed and validated by Moorfields Eye Hospital staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital. No patient identifiable data will be transferred to DeepMind.

Data storage

DeepMind Health has developed and established a state-of-the-art secure patient information handling service utilising Common Criteria EAL4 compliant firewalls and on-disk encryption (using Advanced Encryption Standard with a 256-bit key) of all research data, all housed within an ISO 27001 compliant data centre. After anonymisation data will be transferred to our London, UK data centre. This data handling facility conforms to NHS HSCIC Information Governance Statement of Compliance Toolkit (assessed at level 3).

Access will be granted by the custodian of data and no other members of the team. Only those working directly on the data in a research capacity will have access.

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