Dr. Cheng-Kai Kao

Cheng-Kai Kao, MD, is an academic hospitalist and board-certified clinical informaticist with expertise in digital health and clinical AI, hospital-at-home care, clinical decision support, and healthcare innovation. As Chief Medical Information Officer at UChicago Medicine, Dr. Kao leads major artificial intelligence and digital transformation initiatives, overseeing the evaluation, governance, responsible deployment, and ongoing monitoring of emerging technologies across the enterprise. His broader informatics work focuses on designing clinical decision support tools that enhance patient safety, optimizing workflows to improve efficiency, and making electronic health records more usable while reducing clinicians’ screen time. He also directs clinical informatics courses for the University of Chicago’s medical and master’s programs. As Medical Director of the Office of International Programs, Dr. Kao oversees the care of international patients, works to improve care quality and the patient experience, promotes knowledge exchange, and builds collaborations with academic medical centers and healthcare organizations worldwide. He also developed and leads UChicago Medicine’s Hospital at Home program, an innovative model that brings acute-level care into patients’ homes. In recognition of his leadership in healthcare informatics and patient-centred care, Dr. Kao was named a Top Hospitalist by the American College of Physicians in 2017. He is a frequent speaker on healthcare digital transformation, clinical AI, and hospital-at-home care.