Taha Kass-Hout, MD

Director, Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer • Amazon Web Services

Taha is Director, Machine Learning & Chief Medical Officer at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Prior to joining Amazon, Taha served as the first Chief Health Informatics Officer for U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 2013 to 2016, where he created openFDA and precisionFDA. The initiatives were part of President Obama’s 2015 Precision Medicine Initiative. Both efforts were referenced in the 2015 White House Strategy for American Innovation, and precisionFDA was awarded the top prize at the 2016 Bio-IT World Best Practices.

Additionally, Taha spearheaded groundbreaking programs at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention for electronic disease surveillance from 2009 to 2013, including the quick disease surveillance scale-up during the H1N1 influenza pandemic taking it from less than 6% to >90% coverage of the U.S. population ahead of the 2nd wave of the pandemic. During a one year transition from the federal government, Taha served as Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Health and Analytics Officer at Trinity Health, one of the leaders in value-based health care systems in the U.S. In this role, he led the development of the American Heart Association Precision Medicine initiative.

Taha received his medical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and during his time there, was part of the BOAT coronary stent clinical trial. He holds a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Science (Bioinformatics) from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.