Shaping the vision of tomorrow: construction begins on new eye health centre

Architectural impression © Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

New technologies to address eye diseases are flourishing, which is good news for more than two million people in the UK who are living with sight loss. Modern facilities to host the scientists working at the cutting edge of eye health technology are needed, and that’s where Oriel, an initiative to build a new centre for advancing eye health, comes in.

The new centre is being built in Camden, London, as a result of a collaboration between Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, a specialist eye hospital also based in London, the University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Charity. Construction began in 2023, with the centre due to open in 2027.

A global leader in ophthalmology research and education, Moorfields is the UK’s leading provider of eye care services and sees around 780,000 patient visits a year. In partnership with UCL, it conducts research and develops new treatments for many rare and common eye diseases.

“The new centre will give us much more opportunity to collaborate and to provide a space that allows our health professionals, researchers, and students to work together more collaboratively for the benefit of patients,” says Louisa Wickham, medical director of Moorfields Eye Hospital.

The new state-of-the art building will help us increase capacity to treat children and adults with eye diseases, streamline treatment and diagnostics pathways, improve the environment around patient care with modern facilities built to reflect patients’ needs, and speed up the research process by sharing advanced technology and collaborating between researchers.

“My wish would be that no patient suffers preventable, irreversible loss of vision as a result of not receiving the right care, at the right time, at the right place,” says Louisa.

Watch below the new video from Moorfields Eye Charity about the exciting project:

This grant falls under our Special Interest Programme, which reflects the Trustees’ interests in making dynamic, diverse, and innovative grants. You can read more about the Special Interest Programme here. You can read a previous Oak article about Moorfield’s work in age-related macular degeneration, a particularly challenging disease, and a leading cause for sight loss, here. Click here to learn more about the Oriel project.