Jong-Soo Choi: The Powerhouse Behind Korea’s Most Advanced Smart Hospital Revolution
Jong-Soo Choi: The Powerhouse Behind Korea’s Most Advanced Smart Hospital Revolution
Blog Article
For most organizations, digital transformation sounds like a far-off promise. But for Jong-Soo Choi, Samsung Medical Center's Chief Technology Officer, it's a daily reality. With more than three decades of experience in healthcare IT, Choi has converted bold concepts into utilitarian tools that make care faster, safer, and more human.
Instead of following trends, Choi listens—attentively—to what healthcare practitioners truly require. He then creates customized solutions, ranging from mobile check-ins that reduce wait times to bedside QR codes providing instant access to a patient's records, to AI capabilities that assist nurses in healing wounds with confidence. His guiding principle never wavers: empowering caregivers while improving patient outcomes.
At his helm, Samsung Medical Center has become one of the most sophisticated smart hospitals globally. Choi has reshaped hospital infrastructure behind the scenes to be secure, seamless, and responsive to the actual-world demands of clinical teams. Each system he introduces is stress-tested for one key attribute: how well it empowers the people who deliver care.
That human-centric approach made Choi a celebrated figure globally. In 2025, he was recognized as a Change Maker in the Global Patient Innovator category at the HIMSS Global Conference to commemorate his enduring contributions to careful, human-focused healthcare innovation.
A Lifetime Committed to Digital Care
Choi started in the late 1990s, the early days of the internet. He developed systems for patients to schedule appointments over the internet and for doctors to access records remotely—innovations then. As cell phone technology grew, he added the ability to view test results and pay bills on a smartphone, opening up much more access and convenience.
By the 2010s, he was integrating diverse data types—clinical, genomic, lifestyle—to support predictive research and analytics. He reflects, “I’ve been fortunate to grow my career alongside healthcare’s digital evolution.” That progress, however steady, has always been rooted in his mission to improve the care experience.
The CTO’s Mission: Stable Systems and Practical Innovation
At Samsung Medical Center, Choi’s first priority is keeping IT systems stable and secure—because every hospital operation depends on them. But his influence goes far beyond maintenance. He spearheads digital transformation projects that remove friction from daily hospital life.
One such example: replacing paper charts with digital displays and enabling clinicians to retrieve patient data with bedside QR codes. These tools streamline workflow and enable quicker, more informed decisions.
"My job is to make things more efficient and satisfying for staff and patients," Choi says. To him, technology is more than a back-end tool—it's the motor of a smoother, smarter healthcare experience.
Choi’s forward-looking vision addresses two urgent challenges: workforce shortages and healthcare inequality. He advocates for expanding hospital-at-home models, powered by wearables, AI, and remote monitoring. Inspired by initiatives like the U.S. “Home Hospital” model, he believes the future lies in care that comes to patients—rather than the other way around.
He also points to centralized systems of resource-sharing, whereby local clinics provide practical care, while city-level specialists give real-time advice through AI-powered telehealth tools. For these to be effective, however, he insists that there should be strong legal and policy infrastructure to make it even and accessible across geographies.
DARWIN: The Heart of a Smart Hospital
Among Choi’s most transformative achievements is DARWIN—short for Data Analytics and Research Windows for Integrated kNowledge—a next-generation Healthcare Information System developed in-house at Samsung Medical Center.
Under his guidance, the hospital became the first worldwide to achieve HIMSS Stage 7 validation in four domains: infrastructure, EMRs, imaging, and analytics. It also received a perfect Digital Health Indicator score.
But for Choi, the real success is measured in outcomes. Outpatient volume grew nearly 30% without increasing staff, average hospital stay dropped from 7.3 to 5.4 days, and bed occupancy remained strong at 90%. “These are the changes I’m proud of,” he says. “They directly benefit patients and lighten the load on our teams.”
AI in Action: Skinex and Smart Nursing
AI is increasingly taking a role at Samsung Medical Center, partly thanks to Choi. One highlight: Skinex, an AI-based pressure ulcer care app jointly developed with Fine Healthcare.
With a barcode scanner or smartphone, nurses can take a photo of a patient's wound, and the app will analyze the image to suggest the ideal dressing material. Based on 9,000 labeled images and deep learning algorithms, Skinex enhances decision-making, especially for junior nurses, and has already been approved as a medical device in Korea.
Choi says that the tool has enhanced the healing outcomes by 30–40%, without affecting the workload of staff. "This is the true promise of AI—not replacing nurses, but augmenting them," he explains.
Barriers to Innovation—and the Will to Overcome Them
Choi is open about the obstacles that face healthcare innovators. Privacy of patient data is a significant issue, which frequently hinders the adoption of AI and cloud technologies. Budgetary issues also restrict speedy rollout, particularly in the public health environment.
Even with great tools at the ready, the approval and integration process often proves to be tedious. "It hurts my heart," he says, "because the longer it takes, the more patients miss out on life-saving innovations."
Partnership as a Pathway to Progress
Choi highlights collaboration as key to speeding up innovation. Samsung Medical Center collaborates with Samsung SDS for cloud infrastructure, AWS for artificial intelligence research, GE Healthcare for imaging, and Douzone Bizon to develop the larger healthcare ecosystem.
"These collaborations enable us to pilot new concepts, collaborate on resources, and introduce cutting-edge tools into the care environment sooner," he outlines.
Tomorrow's Healthcare, Today
Choi imagines a not-too-distant future when health screenings are routine—through smart toilets or mouth saliva sensors. In such a future, AI interprets genetic information, lifestyle, and medical histories to forecast disease and tailor treatment.
Nevertheless, he believes that such advancements need to be weighed against firm societal consensus on data use and protection. "Encryption by itself isn't sufficient," he argues. "We have to have clear frameworks based on consent, trust, and equity."
Keeping Care Human in a Digital World
Despite his passion for tech, Choi draws a firm line: AI must remain a support tool, not a substitute for clinicians. “We’re nowhere near a future where AI makes life-or-death calls alone,” he asserts.
Doctors bring context, compassion, and complexity to every decision. AI can organize data and assist with diagnosis—but empathy, intuition, and ethical judgment are uniquely human strengths.
"Technology assists," Choi tells us, "but the soul of healthcare is human interaction."
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Successful digital transformation begins with culture, according to Choi. "If individuals are not sold on the importance of innovation, no matter how sophisticated technology is, it will fail," he says.
Innovation seeps into every corner of Samsung Medical Center. When frontline workers feel its benefits directly, they become natural evangelists. Small, agile pilot projects build momentum and confidence throughout departments.
"It's breathing life into clay," Choi says. "You empower people, and they create the future."
A Message to the Next Generation
Choi encourages the next generation of healthcare technologists to look past the equipment and consider the individuals. "If a robot transports supplies but doesn't enable nurses to spend more time with patients, it's missing the point."
He imagines systems that offload mundane work and allow caregivers to concentrate on healing relationships. That's when digital transformation is truly realized—not with the systems, but with the ethos of care.
Learning from Failures: The DARWIN Launch
Not everyone went according to plan. In 2015, the first DARWIN launch faltered because of lingering bugs. Choi acknowledges they rushed too quickly without engaging enough end-users.
That failure reoriented their approach. They moved to a "one team" approach—clinicians, developers, and coordinators side-by-side with daily scrums and immediate feedback. In 2016, the relaunch was a success, and user-centered design became a core principle.
"The best results don't result from code," he ponders. "They result from the people that use it."
A Global Mission
Samsung Medical Center’s commitment to innovation continues under the banner of “Connect & Thru,” building on earlier programs like “Paper-less” and “Wait-less.” Now ranked 18th in Newsweek’s World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Choi aims for a top-10 spot—but not for bragging rights.
“Our mission is bigger,” he says. “We want to share what we’ve learned with the world.”
For Choi, digital healthcare is not only about effectiveness or status. It's about global fairness—making sure everyone, regardless of location, has access to the care they require.