Celebrating Emerging Researchers:
A/Prof Weng Chan
A/Prof Weng Chan, Emerging Ophthalmic Researcher Award Winner 2024
In this video, Dr. Weng, a retinal surgeon and clinician-scientist based in Adelaide, shares insights into his groundbreaking research in natural language processing (NLP), a branch of machine learning. His work focuses on unlocking valuable insights from uncategorised medical data by giving structure and meaning to clinical notes, enabling better decision-making and expanding research opportunities. Dr. Weng emphasises the transformative potential of technology in ophthalmology, from autonomous screenings to advanced imaging techniques. He advocates for investing in impactful research, likening it to education—an effort whose rewards are realised over time with far-reaching benefits. Addressing aspiring researchers, he encourages curiosity, perseverance and taking small, meaningful steps that contribute to the broader body of knowledge, underscoring the importance of nurturing environments like those supported by AVR.
Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Weng I’m a Retina Surgeon based in Adelaide and I’m a clinician scientist that has been dabbling in the field of AI or more specifically in natural language processing. I’m extremely honoured to be receiving this award.
My main area of research is in how we can use natural language processing which is a branch of machine learning in helping us unlock the information that we have in uncategorised medical data. Natural language processing is a branch of machine learning that allows the machine to understand or to give meaning to words that we use. So, this is where I really want to make an impact, because I think if we can give meaning to all of these notes, then we unlock a lot of data that otherwise is not available for analysis and once we unlock it or digitise and categorise it using machine learning -which does all the heavy lifting for us- then we allow ourselves easy access to huge amount of data and as with all things, data drives decision making.
I think based on on these tools we will be able to improve our access and improve the volume of research that we do I think new technology definitely will have a massive role in ophthalmic research and clinical medicine in general. We already have all of these things as day-to-day clinical practice now some of the screenings that we are doing are now autonomous some of the OCT segmentation are done by machine algorithms so we will see more and more of these infiltrate our day-to-day clinical practice. This goes back to my personal philosophy in doing work that is impactful.
As a clinician or as a scientist, we need to think about scale and if we invest or participate or give our money to efforts that not to say they are not important but give our money to service-based philanthropy efforts, or what tends to happen is you might serve 500,000 people by providing them with sight restoring surgeries etc but what I see in investment into research is that it multifold; The return of investment is far greater if you land something that is impactful in the future. For example, genetic research – if you unlock a gene that will allow you to predict a disease with near certainty or if you unlock a piece of molecule that allows you to treat a certain blinding disease, these are much much further….the ripple is far far ahead but if you do get one of these, the impact is massive.
I believe what AVR is doing is this very important bridge. Resources diverted to research it’s a bit like resources diverted to education… it comes many many years later but we need to sustain the effort. Not that long ago I was thinking to myself “oh what should I do research in and I really,really want to do research but what can I do?” We have this amazing community with these amazing talents and also supporting nurturing environment that’s provided by our college and our like grant bodies like the AVR; it allows us to really dive into research that we want to explore.
So for young researchers I say: “don’t be afraid, stay curious. We now have this unprecedented access to all of this knowledge. You have unprecedented access to unprecedented volume. Take a deep dive whatever you’re interested in. Take a deep dive, read everything about it, write to people, ask for advice to say how can I be involved in such a research and research is not overnight. I see it as a journey but you just need to go like: “how can I answer this” and you don’t have to change the world overnight, but one step at a time!
I believe if you just hack at it eventually, what you do will matter, because it will add to the body of knowledge that is the literature that the entirety of the literature and if it helps you it would help someone like you elsewhere in the world.