Clinical Audit is important—it is how we measure what we do in our day to day clinical practice—demonstrating that we provide an effective service for patients and that we are continually seeking to improve and develop our service.

This was a highly interactive meeting organised and sponsored by Novartis but designed in response to requests from retinal specialists who were keen to learn more about the topic, share best practice about the process of clinical audit, and discuss with their peers how they are doing it.

The agenda was designed to be educational with talks from those considered experienced in the field sharing best practice. It also illustrated the power of larger data collections such as that from the UK electronic medical record (EMR) group and demonstrated that audit data can be used to show the impact of new therapies on wider issues of public health.

In the ‘learning from experience’ session—clinicians shared their ‘hands on’ experiences of initiating and collecting audit data—providing useful tips gathered during the experience and how to avoid some of the pitfalls.

The meeting also provided a forum for sharing clinical audit data that had already been collected through a ‘poster hall’ where a wide range of audits in many different clinical settings were presented by clinicians.

Audit is an essential part of delivering the best possible care, and the exchange of information that occurred at this meeting will likely lead to better audits with resultant optimisation of clinical care and better outcomes for our patients.

The feedback from the meeting has been overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to sharing the key points of the day with you through this supplement.

Acknowledgments: This supplement, and the meeting on which it is based, were sponsored by Novartis. All authors received honoraria, contributed to the development of the manuscript, and retained final control of the content and editorial decisions. Medical writing assistance was provided by Steven Cartmell and Jackie Johnson of Novartis.

Novartis have checked that the content was factually accurate, balanced and compliant with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Code of Practice.