Pearse Keane is professor of artificial medical intelligence at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, and a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London. He is originally from Ireland and received his medical degree from University College Dublin (UCD), graduating in 2002. 

In 2016, he initiated a formal collaboration between Moorfields Eye Hospital and Google DeepMind, with the aim of developing artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for the earlier detection and treatment of retinal disease. In August 2018, the first results of this collaboration were published in the journal, Nature Medicine. In May 2020, he jointly led work, again published in Nature Medicine, to develop an early warning system for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), by far the commonest cause of blindness in many countries.  In 2019, he was included on the Evening Standard Progress 1000 list of most influential Londoners and in June 2020, he was profiled in The Economist. In 2022, he was listed in the 'Top 10' of the 'The Power List' by The Ophthalmologist magazine, a ranking of the Top 100 most influential people in the world of ophthalmology.