About BARS

Established in 2001

Since 2001, the British Association of Retinal Screening (BARS) has been the UK's professional organisation for those who provide retinal screening services for people with diabetes. We offer education, representation and support to a wide range of professionals involved in diabetic retinopathy screening, and our members include retinal screeners, graders, administrative and failsafe staff, programme managers, optometrists and ophthalmologists – in fact anyone with a professional interest or involvement in diabetic eye screening.

BARS is a not-for-profit organisation, run by an elected council of volunteers who are drawn from a range of roles within eye screening programmes across the UK, and we aim to support our members via regular conferences, meetings, training days and educational activities.

2025 BARS & Topcon UK POSTER COMPETITION RESULTS

The winning posters of the 2025 BARS/Topcon UK Poster Competition were announced at this year's conference in Birmingham with the winners each receiving a generous cash prize from Topcon UK. The standard and content exceeded expectations and with a total of 13 entries, it was difficult to pick out the individual winners. We would like to commend everyone who took their time and entered, they were all very interesting! The three winning posters can be viewed below by clicking the relevant title.

This Years first placed title is displayed below and went to Ruth McCarthy, Shane McMahon, Joanne Harmon, David Keegan & Caoife Shine with Age related retention and non-attendance in a two year diabetic retinopathy screening pathway: Five year cohort results.

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