GE HealthCare hires former Amazon, FDA exec to oversee science and technology operations

A med-tech leader of note is taking skills refined at Amazon, the FDA and the CDC to GE HealthCare, where he will serve as the newly independent company’s first CTO, the company announced Jan. 5.

Taha Kass-Hout, MD, MS, a cardiologist, bio-statistician and informaticist, arrives at GE HealthCare from Amazon and AWS, where his titles included chief medical officer and vice president of machine learning.

As chief technology officer, Kass-Hout will report to GE HealthCare president and CEO Peter Arduini, focusing on heading and building the company’s new “D3” strategy.

This the healthcare giant defines as a “framework and digital products that emphasize the company’s smart devices, aligned to disease states and enabled by digital” to facilitate precision care.

The D3 group is to conduct research and development aimed at driving “greater end-to-end alignment within our key research and product development segments,” Arduini says.

Before working for Amazon and AWS, Kass-Hout served two terms in the Obama Administration as the FDA’s first Chief Health Informatics Officer as well as director of information science and informatics for the CDC.

Kass-Hout says he hopes to help GE HealthCare create “a world where healthcare has no limits,” along the way “establishing a new frontier in advancing diagnostics and personalized therapeutics.”

Full announcement here.

Dave Pearson

Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.

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