Professor Mark Gillies

High quality observational studies and registries based on real clinical data and post marketing sur-veillance is likely to yield important information in areas where randomized trials are limited due to their restrictive methodologies. We have designed the Fight Retinal Blindness system to perform ongoing audit of the outcomes of treatment of retinal disease. FRB! is a scientific, web based data management system with quality assurance features that allow streamlined collection of higher quality patient data than is usually available from centres involved in routine clinical care. It has an innovative design that gathers patient data from real-world clinical practice in an anonymized fashion.

The aims of the project are to:
• Determine the most clinically- and cost-effective treatment regimens for macular disease
• Promote the development of individualized patient management strategies
• Facilitate the identification and development of evidence-based national benchmarks
The system has three broad aspects:
• Practice-level patient quality management audit
• Project (national and international)-level data analysis
• National and international performance benchmarking

While the FRB! system was originally designed for retinal disease, we are interested in the potential to broaden its scope to other ophthalmic conditions.