Focus group welcomes people with experience of AMD

A new focus group is inviting people who experience Scotland’s most common vision loss condition to become involved.

The focus group encourages anyone with lived experience of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) to become involved. Family members of people with AMD, and loved ones and carers, are also invited. The focus group is a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group. Participants could help researchers improve their understanding of AMD and make a real difference for future generations. AMD is estimated to impact more than 60,000 people in Scotland, according to estimates from the Scottish Public Health Network. 

The PPI focus group is run by a research project called SCONe, which is co-funded by Sight Scotland. SCONe stands for the Scottish Collaborative Optometry-Ophthalmology Network e-research. SCONe aims to improve eye health research through the analysis of images captured by optometrists. SCONe aims to build a Scotland-wide retinal resource, which could help enable the early identification of eye disease, improve clinical outcomes, and help uncover biomarkers that are predictive of ocular and systemic diseases.

SCONe hopes to benefit from PPI focus group participants’ feedback on SCONe resources, from opinions on how to best include peoples’ lived experiences, and on communicating findings with the public.

SCONe’s Patient Public Involvement group focused on AMD and the impacts of AMD is taking place on Friday 3 May at Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh. This first meeting will introduce the project and its objectives. Participants in the group will be compensated for their time. No prior experience is required. Participants need to be 18 years or older.