More information
Description
Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness and reduced vision in the developed world. Many countries in Europe, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have no national screening programs for diabetic retinopathy, while Norway just recently implemented such a program, which is not yet personalized. Currently, the monitoring interval for patients with diabetic retinopathy set according to the international guidelines is “rigid”. It may, however, vary from patient to patient, as it depends on various risk factors. The cost of regular annual screening of diabetic retinopathy is enormous, while the rising number of patients with diabetes mellitus surpasses the capacity of ophthalmologists. The aim of the project is to implement a new personalized diabetic retinopathy screening and monitoring program using artificial intelligence (AI) for future applications in the integrated care of patients with diabetes.
Objectives of this project include: 1. Evaluation of the current diabetic retinopathy status and risk factors in patients with diabetes in partner countries; 2. Improvement and implementation of a personalized risk-stratification algorithm in the daily diabetes eye screening; 3. Utilization of fast data extraction methods from medical electronic records and AI to detect novel risk factors for diabetic retinopathy; 4. Evaluation of the cost-efficacy of running an AI-based diabetic retinopathy monitoring program in the partner countries; 5. Initiation of a sustainable screening and monitoring programs for diabetic retinopathy in the partner countries as part of their ongoing or future eHealth initiatives.
The project will be promoted by the University of Latvia (Riga, Latvia). Other participants will be Tartu University (Tartu, Estonia), University of Oslo (Oslo, Norway) and Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (Kaunas, Lithuania).