Koon Ho Rha Korea (Republic of)

Dr. Koon Ho Rha is the Director of NAVER Healthcare Lab, Korea. NAVER is Korea’s premier IT company, services include search engine, on-line shopping (NAVER SHOPPING), fintech (NAVER PAY), Cloud services (NAVER CLOUD) and entertainment (eg. WEBTOON). Before joining NAVER in 2021, Dr. Rha was Professor of Urology and Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center. He received both his premedicine education magna cum laude and his M.D. degree from the Yonsei University, Seoul. Dr. Rha was trained during his urological rotating residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He underwent fellowship training in minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution as Engineering and Urology endowed fellow, and served as visiting Assistant Professor in Urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During his stay, he also completed “Business in Medicine” a 1-year MBA program at the School of Business Administration and Education. In 2005 at Yonsei University Dr. Rha set up the East Asia’s first robotic surgery program which now has the most robotic cases as a single hospital in the world with 35,000 cases. During next 15 years, Dr. Rha has performed the most cases in Asia with more than 3700 cases of robotic cases. Dr. Rha also led Korean surgical robot clinical trial which resulted in KFDA approval in August 2017. He has given more than 550 lectures on robotic surgery and performed live surgery or proctored more than 60 occasions in 15 countries including US, China, Japan, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, India, Malaysia, Italy, Kuwait, Vietnam and France. Dr. Rha has more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications on minimally invasive urological surgery. On administrative side, he has served as the Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Strategy Officer at Yonsei University Health System which now serves as foundation of basic knowledge at NAVER Healthcare Lab developing various innovative, AI -based healthcare services.