The FDA has selected Rick Abramson to lead the agency’s Digital Health Center of Excellence (DHCoE).
On paper, it’s a straightforward personnel move: a physician-executive with digital health experience steps into a role created to help the agency keep pace with software-driven medicine. In practice, this looks like a flare signal, because it lands right as FDA is reworking how it regulates AI and other digital health products, and just weeks after the agency publicly described a lighter-touch posture for parts of the market.
What’s (perhaps more) interesting is that Rick is a diagnostic radiologist. One with a heavy radiology AI résumé in the commercial space.
I have had the fortune of several conversations with Rick as I chaired the ACR Data Science Summit over the past few years, and then in a few personal conversations. Along with the combination of imaging AI, commissioner’s office policy exposure, DHCoE leadership, I’m interested in seeing what comes out of this CoE and will be following closely.