December 5, 2017
The power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning looms over Medtech as a growing force that will bring change, good or bad.
While tech giants like Google, Apple, and IBM circle high above, start-ups such as IDx are close to bringing AI into the physician’s office with AI-supported diagnostic tools.
In this Medtech Talk Podcast, Michael Abramoff, MD, PhD, president, director and co-founder of IDx, tells how the start-up is using AI to better diagnose diabetic retinopathy. The company hopes to secure FDA approval for its IDx-DR system following the completion of clinical trials this summer.
If approved, IDx will be positioned to diagnose patients with the dangerous disease much earlier, giving them a chance to see an ophthalmologist and start treatment earlier to save their sight, Dr. Abramoff says.
The company also sees its system as a way to diagnose other diseases including glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. “The opportunity for dragging down costs is enormous,” he states.
Dr. Abramoff founded the company over a decade ago, long before tech companies showed a strong interest in AI’s role in healthcare. Now, IDx is working with one – IBM Watson Health – to facilite the marriage of both.
Michael Abramoff, MD, PHD
President & Director
IDX
Dr. Michael D Abramoff, MD, PhD is a fellowship‐trained medical retina specialist with a PhD in image analysis, and the Robert C. Watzke Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, with joint appointments at Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is the author of over 300 peer reviewed publications that have been cited over 18,000 times in total, on machine learning, neural networks, retinal image analysis, diabetic retinopathy, and other retinal disease, as well as many book chapters including the chapter on “Retinal Image Analysis” in Ryan’s Retina textbook.
Dr. Abramoff is the inventor of 10 patents and 6 patent applications, editor of the scientific journals Investigations in Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS), and Nature Scientific Reports, past editor of IEEE Transactions in Medical Imaging (TMI), and past Program Chair for the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting. His accomplishments are widely recognized, shown by the many awards he received, including the Young Investigator Award from the Macula Society (2013) and the President’s Award of the American Telemedicine Association (2011), many keynote addresses (such as the one for SPIE Medical Imaging 2012 “Automated detection of retinal disease: when Moore's law meets Baumol's cost disease”) and visiting professorships, and a widely read and highly favorable editorial by Peter McDonnell, MD, chair of Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins, ‘Retinator: revenge of the machines’.
Dr. Abramoff has been funded continuously since 2004 by the National Eye Institute, the Veterans Administration, the Beckman Foundation and other federal, state and philanthropic funding agencies in the US and Europe.
