EU-EYE is accessing funding for vision research

EU-EYE President Einar Stefánsson MD, PhD discusses how the advocacy group is working to promote EU funding for ophthalmology and vision research

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The European Alliance for Vision Research and Ophthalmology (EU-EYE) is an advocacy group composed of several European ophthalmological societies. We launched our organisation at the ESCRS Congress in Barcelona last year, and our purpose is to raise political and societal awareness of the increasing need for vision and ophthalmological research at European level. We were motivated by our observation that, for many years, the profile of ophthalmology research has been relatively low in Europe. It is not as high on the political agenda or the societal agenda as are many other fields of medical science, such as cardiology or research into Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, the research hierarchy in the EU refers to ophthalmology simply as a branch of neurological science. That is also the way it used to be in the US. However, some decades ago the Americans established a National Eye Institute, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health complex in the US. So in the US ophthalmology has a very high profile, whereas this never happened in Europe. REPRESENTATIVES FROM ALL SUBSPECIALTIES The EU-EYE consortium includes representatives from eight ophthalmological societies, namely the ESCRS, EuCornea, EURETINA, the European Association for Vision and Eye Research (EVER), the European Glaucoma Society (EGS), the European Paediatric Ophthalmological Society (EPOS), the European Eye Bank Association (EEBA), and the European Vision Institute (EVI). It also includes representatives from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), and we are hoping to recruit individual national societies and other groups in the future. The recent passing of Dr Peter Barry, who was EU-EYE’s Treasurer, has come as a tremendous blow, as he was an integral and energetic part of our group. However, his spirit shall carry on in this and the many other projects he has helped to inspire and organise. In the beginning, we are focusing our efforts on dealing with the European Parliament. For example, we had a meeting in the European Parliament in the spring, together with some other ophthalmologic societies and we will have another such event in Brussels on World Sight Day, which is in October. The aim of the symposium taking place here in Copenhagen is to make people aware of the fact that European research funds are available for eye research. For example, the largest EU research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020, has billions of euro available for funding research. Therefore, we will have reports from consortia that have successfully gained research funding. They will explain how they did it, so that those attending can hopefully learn and benefit from their experience. To some degree the tide is already turning with regard to funding for eye research. In the past several years EU funding for medical research has become more equitable. It used to be that funding was only available for very specific types of research, generally things that had little to do with ophthalmology. But now funding has become available on a broader non-specific basis and this is already making it easier to access EU funding for eye research.