President for the Society on Social Implications of Technology - IEEE
Session language: spanish with english subtitles
It is 2024. Society has gone from Pandemics, to Wars, to the Effects of Climate Change, Forced Migration and the Challenges of Multiple Complex Emergencies and Large-Scale Disasters. Yet the biggest challenge ahead may be related to the Digital Transformation that the world has slowly experienced in the last decades. Thanks to many of the advancements in Science and Technology, life expectancy for the average person in the world has steadily increased from 2.5 billion in 1950 to over 8 billion by 2022. As individuals live longer, more chronic conditions manifest in their lifetimes, which translates in unsustainable increases in healthcare expenses, towards the end of life. Urban and suburban areas keep growing demographically and their population densities are becoming "hot spots" for the transmission of infectious diseases, that could decimate entire populations. Prevention is key to lowering the costs while improving quality of life. Urbanization and overpopulation have created huge amounts of garbage, not just plastics, but toxic waste, water, air and soil. Simultaneous droughts, fires, and floods worldwide, not only affect agriculture and food production but distribution as well. The accelerated melting of existing glaciers has an impact on the availability of drinking water in critical and overpopulated areas around the world. In addition, wars, rising land temperatures and rising sea levels are producing major forced migration problems to many nations. Not only society has become dependent on the use of digital information, but new challenges such as hate speech, misinformation, the use of social media, and AI, create a complete new "land of opportunity as well as a new land of fear.
Dr. Luis Kun is the 2023 and 2024 IEEE President for the Society on Social Implications of Technology and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of National Security (CHDS/NDU). Born in Montevideo, he graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy in Uruguay and holds a BSEE, MSEE, and PhD degree in BME, all from UCLA. He is an IEEE Life Fellow, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine. He is the founding Editor in Chief of Springer's Journal of Health and Technology 2010-2020. He spent 14 years at IBM and was the Director of Medical Systems Technology at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. As Senior IT Advisor to AHCPR, he formulated the IT vision and was the lead staff for High Performance Computers and Communications program and Telehealth. In July 1997, he was an invited speaker to the White House and was largely responsible for the first Telemedicine Homecare Legislation signed by President Clinton in August 1997. As a Distinguished Fellow at the CDC and an Acting Chief IT Officer for the National Immunization Program, he formulated their IT vision on 10/2000. Dr. Kun received many awards including: AIMBE's first-ever Fellow Advocate Award in 2009; IEEE-USA Citation of Honor Award with a citation, "For exemplary contributions in the inception and implementation of a health care IT vision in the US." In 2009, he was named "Profesor Honoris Causa" by Favaloro University, (Argentina) and "Distinguished Visitor" by City of Puebla, Mexico in 2013. For over 20 years he served as the IEEE Distinguished Visitor for the Computer Society and as a Distinguished Lecturer (DL) for the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and SSIT where he chairs the DL Program since 2016. Since 2014, he serves as an Honorary Professor of the EE Department at the School of Engineering of the University in Montevideo, UY. He received the Medal of Merit on October, 2016 in Mexico by the National Unit of Engineering Associations and was named Visiting Professor by the National Technological University of Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2017.