Placing Newham at the heart of fighting childhood blindness
Shining a light on our children’s nursing heroes as we celebrate our first ever National Children’s Nurses Day
Ivone Lancoma-Malcolm is our lead paediatric research nurse, based at Newham Hospital she also works across The Royal London and Whipps Cross hospitals.
Since the Covid pandemic, Ivone and her team have built a strong research momentum, working alongside midwives and neonatal nurses to embed research into routine clinical care.
Ivone and her team played a significant role in the DIVO (Digital Imaging versus Ophthalmoscopy) study, a major study led by Cambridge that tested whether a new handheld digital camera called the Neocam can detect congenital cataracts, which affects about 1 in 3,000 newborn babies, more accurately than the current standard newborn eye check done by clinicians.
In the UK, around one‑third of cases are missed at birth, which delays treatment and can permanently affect a child’s vision. The standard newborn eye test is also less accurate in babies with higher pigmentation, meaning it disproportionately misses cataracts in Black and Asian infants.
The Neocam uses infrared light, which works equally well across all skin and eye pigmentation levels.
Ivonne and her team recruited 8,970 babies; 3,536 babies from Newham, 3,060 from the Royal London and 2,338 from Whipps Cross. Our contribution represented 24% of the entire UK recruitment.
As Newham serves one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the UK, their participation was scientifically crucial for ensuring the technology works for everyone, making them an essential part of delivering more equitable and representative research and a major contributor to the fight against avoidable childhood blindness.
As we celebrate the first ever National Children’s Nurses Day on Monday 29 June 2026, we’d like to thank our incredible children’s nurses for their extraordinary dedication and compassion to care for babies, children, young patients and their families.