Digital Health From Assumptions to Implementations

Homero Rivas, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS  is a Professor of Surgery, and Associate Dean of Innovation and the Future at the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dubai, UAE. Prior to this, he was Associate Professor and the Director of Innovative Surgery at Stanford University. He has been involved in Digital Health for many years and has founded and advised many Digital Health startups. As a thought leader in Digital Health, he often collaborates with entrepreneurs and innovators from the Silicon Valley, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. He is strong proponent of novel technologies in healthcare such as wearables, augmented and virtual reality, telemedicine, 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence, etc. He is a proponent of implementing design thinking in medical education. He is the author of multiple peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. He is the Co-Editor of the book “Digital Health, Scaling Healthcare to the World”.

Thomas Boillat, PhD, MSc is an assistant professor in healthcare innovation and technologies. He is also the co-founder of the Design Lab, an initiative of the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences. He designs and evaluates digital health solutions in view of increasing patient satisfaction, experience, and safety. He is also a Human-centered approach advocate and teaches Design Thinking to undergraduates, postgraduates and medical professionals. He also facilitates Design Thinking workshops and projects with medical professionals, designers, and engineers to equip them with skills that make them actors of change. In addition to his current role, he advises different startups in the field of digital health and innovation in the UAE, Switzerland and South America. Prior to his current position, he was a visiting scholar at Stanford School of Medicine and a senior researcher in computer science at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He also worked for different multinationals as well as for the scientific Swiss consulate (swissnex) in Boston.