Irene Stratton

I started my career as a medical statistician in 1980, working for Professor Sir Richard Doll in the Cancer Epidemiology and Clinical Trials Unit in 9, Keble Road. I worked on industrial cancers and radiation. I moved departments in 1988 to work on a large study of Type 2 diabetes, UKPDS. I stayed there for 20 years. I became drawn to the area of diabetic eye disease after reading an article by the author Sue Townsend. She lost her sight due to diabetes and I then decided that my mission statement would be "Nobody to lose vision needlessly as a result of diabetes".  A move to the Gloucestershire Retinal Research Group followed, where I worked on screening for diabetic eye disease for the national programme, risk estimation for progression of diabetic eye disease, audit of age-related macula degeneration. I retired from that post at the end of 2020. 

My work has underpinned international guidelines in the treatment of diabetes. My work in diabetic eye disease has been implemented to provide risk-based screening intervals in Scotland and Norway and has led to a new Key Performance Indicator in diabetic eye screening in England. 

I am the statistical advisor for the journal Diabetic Medicine and review for many journals in diabetes and ophthalmology. 

I was on the Research Committee for Diabetes UK for 7 years and on the Grants Committee for the Novo Nordisk Research Foundation for 6 years. I have been a member of many Trial Steering Committees and Data Monitoring Committees in both diabetes and in ophthalmology. I am a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health by distinction and in 2019 was given the Vision UK Award for Excellence in Evidence and Statistics.