GE HealthCare Names Health Tech Pioneer Taha Kass-Hout First Chief Technology Officer

January 6, 2023 — GE HealthCare announced that Taha Kass-Hout MD, MS, has been named Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the company’s new science and technology organization. The new group, alongside the creation of the CTO role, demonstrates GE HealthCare’s commitment to driving innovation, growth, and value through research and development.

Reporting into GE HealthCare President and CEO Peter Arduini, Dr. Kass-Hout will help drive GE HealthCare’s D3 precision care strategy, a framework and digital products that emphasize the company’s smart devices, aligned to disease states and enabled by digital. D3 brings data and insights together to optimize the clinical and patient journey and enhances the company's ability to enable precision care. 

In his new role, Dr. Kass-Hout will work in partnership with GE HealthCare’s four business segments (Imaging, Ultrasound, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics), regions, and global engineering and machine learning (ML) teams to drive growth through clinical research, patient-centric innovation and advancements to GE HealthCare’s platforms, and digital and ML capabilities. 

An industry and digital leader, on a recently updated U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) list of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled medical devices, GE HealthCare had the highest number of authorizations, with 42 listed 510(k) clearances to date. GE HealthCare AI-enabled products include AIR Recon DL, an MRI deep-learning-based solution that can scan patients in half the time of a conventional scan while also improving image quality; Critical Care Suite 2.0, an industry-first collection of AI algorithms embedded on a mobile x-ray device for case prioritization, automated measurements, and quality control; and Voluson 22, a Women’s Health ultrasound system that provides improved image quality and specialized clinical tools to help see more anatomical detail with greater certainty and support excellent patient care.

Prior to joining GE HealthCare, Dr. Kass-Hout served as Vice President, Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer Amazon and Amazon Web Services. In that role, Dr. Kass-Hout established and led Health AI strategy and technologies, including Amazon HealthLake, Amazon Comprehend Medical, and Amazon Omics, for health care, genomics, and life sciences industries. He also served two terms in the Obama Administration as the FDA’s first Chief Health Informatics Officer, and Director, Information Science and Informatics for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new science and technology organization will work to execute GE HealthCare’s common goal of advancing the future of healthcare by delivering personalized care across the patient journey to improve patient outcomes and increase productivity for customers.

“GE HealthCare has a strong track record of industry-first technologies and an innovation pipeline of products focused on improving patient care,” said Peter Arduini, GE HealthCare President and CEO. “As a cardiologist, digital and ML expert, Taha has exceptional clinical and technology experience. Under his leadership, our new science and research organization will drive greater end-to-end alignment within our key research and product development segments to deliver innovative solutions that transform the future of healthcare and enhance our ability to enable precision care.”

The new science and technology organization will be made up of researchers who innovate new technologies for the healthcare ecosystem; the digital organization that executes on digital strategies from software development to device integration and cloud adoption to help drive better clinical decision making and improve patient outcomes; and the region research teams who connect and execute the external engagement strategy and cultivate scientific mindshare and academic partnerships with GE HealthCare’s innovation strategy.

“As a clinician, public servant, and digital heath and ML expert, I am honored to join the GE HealthCare team, whose passion, purpose and commitment to lead the digital transformation and improve outcomes for patients and providers clearly aligns with mine,” said Taha Kass-Hout MD, MS, Chief Technology Officer, GE HealthCare. “I am excited about what lies ahead and the incredible opportunity to deliver on GE HealthCare’s purpose of creating a world where healthcare has no limits and establishing a new frontier in advancing diagnostics and personalized therapeutics to people.”

Dr. Kass-Hout will define and lead a customer-driven enterprise-wide innovation and clinical strategy, integrating the most pressing clinical priorities with a multi-year technology strategy focused on new product introductions that support care pathways, R&D investment prioritization and a team with diversity of thought and capabilities to fuel clinical advancements, growth, and innovation.

“One of the biggest dilemmas our customers face is delivering personalized care the right way, getting the right diagnosis with the right data,” said Arduini. “With our D3 precision care framework, GE HealthCare is uniquely positioned to help our customers leverage data across health care systems, to solve diagnosis challenges and develop personalized approaches for better patient outcomes, while increasing productivity.”

For more information: https://www.gehealthcare.com/