Michael Abramoff

Michael David Abràmoff (born 1963) is a Dutch-American ophthalmologist, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is the Robert C. Watzke Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Digital Diagnostics (fka. IDx Technologies, Inc.), of Iowa City, called by Wired Magazine "the bolder AI company", and which received the first FDA marketing authorization for an autonomous diagnostic AI system in any field of medicine.
Early life and education.
Abràmoff was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and received his MD and MS (information theory) from the University of Amsterdam. He was a research fellow in the Neural Networks lab at RIKEN, Tokyo, Japan. He was Director of R&D at Prodix SA, an image analysis company in Paris, France. He performed his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Utrecht Academic Hospital, and his vitreoretinal fellowship at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He did his graduate research leading to a Ph.D. in medical image analysis at the University of Utrecht.
Medical career.
Abràmoff is referred to as "The Retinator," a nickname given to him in an "Ophthalmology Times" article, referring to the work he has done on improving automated medical diagnostic algorithms. One of his keynote addresses was on the role autonomous AI can play in improving healthcare productivity for SPIE Medical Imaging.
Abràmoff is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed research articles, and his work has been cited over 35,000 times, leading to an h-index of 65 (Google Scholar). He is inventor on 19 US and international patents and patent applications primarily related to retinal imaging and machine learning. Abramoff was also one of the early developers of ImageJ.
On November 27, 2020, Dr. Abramoff was named in James Gardner's keynote address to the Societa' Oftalmologica Italiana, “Key Persons Who Have Advanced the Understanding of Diabetic Retinopathy.”
Business career.
Abràmoff founded three companies, EyeCheck, a teleretinal diabetic retinopathy screening company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and i-Optics, an ophthalmic device company. In 2010, he founded IDx LLC, IDx, Technologies, Inc. now Digital Diagnostics of which he is currently Executive Chairman.
In March 2016, IDx announced an Alliance for Eye Health with IBM Watson. In January 2018 the results of its pivotal clinical trial for an AI-based autonomous system to detect diabetic retinopathy in primary care were submitted to FDA, exceeding its pre-specified superiority endpoints for diagnostic accuracy. FDA assigned it breakthrough device status for expedited review. He has been dubbed a "Renaissance Man""" by "Retina Physician" by creating a simple and more efficient process of analyzing images that is in the best interest of the patient. It received the first FDA marketing authorization for an autonomous diagnostic AI system in any field of medicine.
On October 25, 2017, in a Congressional Briefing sponsored by the Science Coalition, Abràmoff joined a panel of companies that, like Digital Diagnostics (fka IDx, Technologies), spun out of U.S. research universities. The panelists highlighted to lawmakers the value of putting federal funds toward academic research.
On November 13, 2018, Abràmoff was invited by the Federal Trade Commission to be a panelist for a hearing Understanding Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Predictive Analytics Through Real World Applications. Abràmoff's panel explained how to do safe implementation of AI in medicine.
Personal life.
Outside of the world of medicine and science, Abràmoff was an interviewer for Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Project. He contributed to the Vance Integral Edition.