Joshua D. Stein, MD, MS.
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NEW YORK—Lighthouse Guild named Joshua D. Stein, MD, MS, as the recipient of the 2018 Pisart Award. Dr. Stein’s research focuses on trends in the use of eyecare services, patients’ access to eyecare services, patient outcomes after ocular surgery, the cost-effectiveness of different ocular interventions, and the quality of life for patients with ocular diseases. He uses large databases with the goal of improving patients’ access to care and improving the quality and value of the eyecare patients receive; his work also aims to reduce racial and other disparities in eyecare among different population groups.

The Pisart Award recognizes an early career vision clinician or scientist whose noteworthy, innovative and scholarly contributions in vision science have the potential for substantial influence in the understanding of vision loss, treatment of eye disease or the rehabilitation of people with vision loss. As the 2018 Pisart Award recipient, Dr. Stein will receive a $32,000 prize at Lighthouse Guild’s annual Alfred W. Bressler Vision Science Symposium in the fall.

Through his research in health services and as an early pioneer in “big data” analyses in the field of ophthalmology, Dr. Stein and his team have published innovative analyses of large databases, particularly those involving health care claims data. Dr. Stein’s research tackles important structural and financing questions critical to providing high-quality eyecare services at a reasonable cost. His work has provided significant insight and improvement in a number of areas, Lighthouse Guild said in a statement.

Dr. Stein and his team have performed dozens of studies identifying racial, geographic and other inequities in the receipt of eyecare services and outcomes. His findings have implications for improving access to and quality of eyecare services for the most disadvantaged and at-risk populations.

Working with large health care claims databases has revealed important therapeutic insights. For example, based on results of their research, Dr. Stein and his colleagues around the country have been pursuing a multicenter trial to test whether a class of systemic medications (statins) may reduce patients’ risk of glaucoma progression.

Dr. Stein is an early pioneer in the current wave of work that integrates big data with personalized or precision medicine. Working as a collaborative, multidisciplinary team, Dr. Stein and his colleagues are using big data sources to generate personalized forecasts of disease progression for patients with glaucoma. This work will help guide decision-making on treatment plans for patients with glaucoma.

Dr. Stein is an Associate Professor on the Cataract and Glaucoma Service in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the W.K. Kellogg Eye Center, University of Michigan. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and has published extensively in his field.