Aiming to make healthcare more affordable and accessible globally, Dr. Michael Abramoff has been experimenting with automated medical treatment and diagnostics for decades. IDx, his company based in Iowa, has already created the first FDA approved autonomous artificial intelligence (AI), capable of diagnosing diabetic retinopathy without physician intervention. This system, the LumineticsCore™ (formerly known as IDx-DR), was previously covered on DocWire, however we recently spoke with the IDx President to look further into this innovative system and its inception.
Having roughly 30 years of experience working with AI and neural networks, Dr. Abramoff is a seasoned veteran in the field of machine learning. About 22 years ago when he was training to be an ophthalmologist, Dr. Abramoff saw that diabetes was the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. “It [diabetic retinopathy] is very much preventable, but you need to catch it early before there are symptoms,” he stated. Using his expertise in AI, he decided to use this technology to facilitate this diagnosis.