Dr. Simon Kos had big shoes to fill when he took over the role of Microsoft Chief Medical Officer from Dr. Bill Crounse last year. Dr. Kos said himself that they were some “big scrubs to fill”. However, at the time he had already been with Microsoft for six years and in Health IT for more than a decade before that, so he was no doubt up to the challenge.

As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Kos is responsible for providing clinical guidance, worldwide thought leadership, vision and strategy for Microsoft technologies and solutions in the healthcare industries. He made the move to Health IT after working a few years as a Medical Officer in Sydney, Australia. It was then that Kos decided to go back to school to study software engineering, and later his MBA. He then worked with  InterSystems and Cerner and helped them to implement e-Health initiatives in Australia. In 2010 he joined Microsoft as a Health Industry Manager “with the appreciation that improving health and healthcare was about more than just putting in EMRs.”  Even back then Dr. Kos had the vision to know that the future of healthcare would be in the data analytics and the AI applications that Microsoft would eventually release.

In a recent conversation, with the team here at Health 2.0, Dr. Kos talked about Microsoft’s current framework of digital transformation and highlighted their four pillars; Patient Engagement, Clinician Empowerment, Advanced Analytics, and New Models of Care. As a once practicing doc, he knows that technology needs to help not hinder the healthcare workforce and that AI will be able to improve diagnosis speed and accuracy without replacing or interfering with the clinician. He is a fervent believer that it is important to be constantly evaluating the tech models that may not be viable today but will be in the future. He is excited about Microsoft’s work on patient chatbots and VR/Mixed reality physician education platforms and will be demoing that technology on the Health 2.0 Stage on Monday, October 2nd.

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