Improving analysis of large eye-care records to find rare eye conditions
Official title: Novel subsampling and analysis of big data using examples from IRIS ® Registry
Funded at Wills Eye Health System · NIH-11169941 · Data updated 2026-11-12
The team is trying new ways to pull and analyze huge eye-health records so findings about very rare eye problems come faster and are more reliable for patients.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R21 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Wills Eye Health System NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Philadelphia, United States) |
| Project start | September 1, 2024 |
| Project end | August 31, 2026 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $242,435 |
| NIH project number | 5R21EY035710-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11169941 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
People whose eye-care records are already in the IRIS Registry—especially those with rare ophthalmic conditions—could be included through their existing medical records without extra visits.
✕Less likely to help
People without eye disease or whose care is not captured in the IRIS Registry are unlikely to be included or to see direct benefit from this project.
What this research studies
You will not need to enroll or visit a clinic for this work because researchers will use de-identified records from a large eye-care database (the IRIS Registry). They plan to develop smarter subsampling and analysis techniques so rare events can be studied without running extremely long or crashing computer programs. The methods aim to reduce cloud computing time and costs while avoiding unreliable results from standard statistical models. Researchers will test these approaches using examples from the IRIS Registry to compare their performance to traditional analyses.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could deliver faster, cheaper, and more trustworthy information about rare eye conditions that can help inform doctors and future patient care.
How similar studies have gone: Other EMR-based ophthalmology analyses have produced useful findings, but developing and validating new subsampling methods for very rare events is relatively new and not yet widely proven.
Where this research is happening
-
Wills Eye Health System
Philadelphia, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Zhang, Qiang — Wills Eye Health System
- Study coordinator: Zhang, Qiang
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.