Lama Al-Aswad, MD, MPH

• Vice Chair for Quality and Safety, Director of Tele-ophthalmology, AI and Innovations
• Irene Heinz Given and John La Porte Given Research Professor of Ophthalmology II

Lama A. Al-Aswad, MD, MPH is a board-certified ophthalmologist with subspecialty in glaucoma and cataract with a strong interest in disease prevention and population health management.   She is currently the Professor of Ophthalmology and the Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given Research Professor of Ophthalmology II, Scheie Eye Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Vice Chair for Quality and Safety, and Drector of Teleophthalmology, AI and Innovations,  She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Penn Research in Embedded Computing and Integrated Systems Engineering (PRECISE) Center at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and CEO of EnVision Health Technologies and Visi Health Technologies.   She was a professor of ophthalmology and professor of population health at NYU Langone Health in New York.  She also was the Vice Chair for Innovations and the Director of Teleophthalmology, Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Ophthalmology Innovations Fellowship. She received her medical degree from Damascus University Medical School and completed her glaucoma research fellowship at the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School. Subsequently, she completed her residency in ophthalmology at the SUNY Downstate and her glaucoma clinical fellowship at the University of Tennessee.  

In 2015, Dr. Al-Aswad conferred the degree of Master of Public Health from Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health for her work in healthcare policy and management.

Dr. Al-Aswad is the past president of the NY Glaucoma Society and the Women in Ophthalmology.  She is the founder and past president of the New York chapter of Women in Ophthalmology.  She is currently a member at-large of the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting secretariat and the program committee, member at-large of the American Glaucoma Society and an examiner for the American Board of Ophthalmology.  She served on multiple committees for the American Glaucoma Society, Women in Ophthalmology and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.  She is currently on the ophthalmology glaucoma editorial board, ophthalmology science editorial board and a Section Editor for the subspecialty of AI, Big Data and Telemedicine in Ophthalmology for the Asia Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology.  She holds an appointment with the FDA as a voting member on the ophthalmic device panel.  

Dr. Al-Aswad has launched multiple educational curricula for medical students, residents, fellows and most recently in 2020-2021 the faculty development curriculum, the artificial intelligence curriculum and the teleophthalmology curriculum at NYU Langone department of ophthalmology.  She helped launch the glaucoma fellowship at Columbia University in 2004 and was its director from 2013-2019.  In 2020 she launched the ophthalmology innovation fellowship at NYU Langone Department of Ophthalmology.

Understanding the burden of disease and the need to improve access to care she expanded her interest to innovations and artificial intelligence.  In 2017, she launched the tele-ophthalmology screening project for the four-leading cause of blindness using a mobile tele-ophthalmology unit equipped with state-of-the-art devices and staffed with technicians, linked in real-time to a reading center.  In 2020 due to the changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, she built a vision app integrating it with Epic for patient use during virtual visits as part of a suite of apps for remote monitoring.  She launched the ophthalmology data core for machine learning as tool for blindness prevention at NYU.  She recently launched two digital companies for the transformation eye care delivery to decrease the burden of eye disease.  

My education and training

• Medical School: Damascus University
• Residency: Boston Medical Center
• Residency: SUNY Downstate Medical Center
• Fellowship: University of Tennessee Health Science Center

• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania: Has privileges to treat patients in the hospital.
• Pennsylvania Hospital: Has privileges to treat patients in the hospital.
• Penn Presbyterian Medical Center: Has privileges to treat patients in the hospital.