Homero Rivas, MD, MBA, FACS, FASMBS is a Professor of Surgery, and Associate Dean of Innovation and the Future at the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dubai, UAE. Formerly he was Associate Professor and the Director of Innovative Surgery at Stanford University. As a digestive and bariatric surgeon, he has 18 years of experience. After his training in general surgery at the University of North Dakota, he completed two one-year fellowships in Minimally Invasive Surgery at the University of Louisville and also at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Spain. He is certified by the American Board of Surgery. He is a pioneer and leader in numerous state-of-the art innovative techniques of minimal access surgery including: scarless surgery; natural orifice surgery; Per Oral Endoscopic Myotomy (POEM) for achalasia, robotic surgery, and more. He has been involved in minimal access surgery both nationally in the US and internationally in nearly all continents, as a surgeon-in-training, a practicing surgeon and also as teacher of other expert surgeons. Dr. Rivas Co-Chairs the International Committee for the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, and he has been inducted as Honorary Fellow for both, the Brazilian College of Surgeons and the Brazilian College of Digestive Surgery.

Dr. Rivas has been involved in Digital Health for many years and has founded and advised many Digital Health startups. As a thought leader in Digital Health, he often collaborates with entrepreneurs and innovators from the Silicon Valley and now in the Middle East. He is also a Co-Founder and Director of the 8-Lab (Emergent Innovations in Global Health Lab). He is strong proponent of novel technologies in healthcare such as wearables, augmented and virtual reality, telemedicine, 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence engines, etc. He teaches does some research on those subjects and also on implementing design thinking in medical education. He is the author of multiple peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. He is the Co-Editor of a book called “Digital Health, Scaling Healthcare to the World”. He holds an MBA from the Cox School of Business at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.