Richard Bowman is an associate professor at LSHTM and an honorary associate professor at Institute of Child Health, and a practising consultant ophthalmologist and fellowship director at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He studied medicine at Cambridge University and Guy’s Hospital and trained in ophthalmology in Cambridge, Glasgow, Moorfields and Great Ormond Street with an observership at the Mayo Clinic. His research on trachoma in the Gambia was awarded an MD degree by Cambridge university and the Charles Hudson prize and Moorfields Research Medal. He has served on the exam board for the International Council of Ophthalmology (advanced exam lead), COECSA and the Ophthalmology Foundation (clinical exam lead). He has served on the paediatric sub-committee of the RCOphth and on UK and European expert groups developing guidelines for diagnosis and management of cerebral visual impairment. He currently holds grants from NIHR and Velux Stiftung. He is an ordained Baptist Church Minister, pastor of an inner city church, and an accredited foster carer. He is chair of the UK board of Their Lives Matter (TLM) supporting children with cancer in east Africa.
Affiliations
Research
I have published around 150 papers with a Google scholar H factor of 35
Recent Research has focused on 2 areas:
1) Global retinoblastoma studies
I have co-led a global collaboration which enabled us to recruit over half the world’s new cases of Rb in 2017 and track them for 3 years. We are just beginning to recruit a new cohort for 2024 and have recruited over 150 countries and 427 centres. Rb is one of the top 5 childhood cancers prioritized by current WHO campaign, and probably has the best global evidence base, due to the LSHTM project. This has not only enabled us to report on large global disparities in presentation and outcome including mortality. It has also suggested new hypotheses that children in poorer countries have biologically more aggressive disease (independent of late presentation) which could be highlighting differences in nutrition, co-infection with oncoviruses or genetic variation. We are aiming to investigate these hypotheses with the new cohort.
The data from the first cohort has generated 12 papers in international journals including JAMA oncology and Lancet Global Health
Outputs: Open data set from the first global Rb cohort. https://zenodo.org/records/3727687
2) Paediatric neuro-ophthalmology and in particular cerebral visual impairment:
We have been working on new assessments for children with CVI on order to understand their visual strengths and weaknesses more accurately than routine eye clinic tests would permit. These assessment techniques have included structured history taking, formal tests of visual perception and pattern visual evoked potential testing. We have also developed novel interventions such as near vision glasses for at risk babies (3,6) and adaptive strategies. We have seen some encouragement in terms of improved quality of life from pilot data (4,7).
Outputs: 1) The insight package, an excel questionnaire with a macro which generates a set of adaptive strategies tailored to the questionnaire responses. 2) A new battery of visual perception tests now available for children with potential CVI in the developmental vision clinic at GOSH
Selected Publications
