Professor Rachel Pilling

Professor Rachel Pilling has been a consultant paediatric ophthalmologist in the UK since 2010 and was appointed as professor of special needs and learning disability eye care by the University of Bradford in 2020. She has published guidance on eye care for learning disability for national organisations and developed quality standards for eye departments. Most recently, her work has focused on special school visual assessment, tools for assessing visual function in children with complex needs (theViBeMatrix).

Rachel has a passion for ‘making it easier’ – easier to understand cerebral visual impairment (CVI), easier to diagnose, easier to offer support to children and families, and most of all, making it easier to see. She has worked with NHS England and partners to establish a national Special School Eye Care Service for children with special needs and has recently led a team in producing national guidelines for the role of the eye clinic in assessment of a child with suspect CVI.

Her current research interests are inidentifying atypical visual behaviours as early indicators of neurodiversity.

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