São Paulo – A middle child among nine siblings raised in the small village of Kamed El Louz, Lebanon, Jihan Zoghbi (pictured above) didn’t graduate in Medicine as her parents wanted her to. She obtained a degree in Math from the University of Beirut in 1997. But other decisions would lead the Lebanese increasingly closer to the healthcare industry. She currently presides over the Brazilian Healthcare CIOs Association (Abcis).
In the Lebanese capital, Zoghbi met her current husband, a Brazilian who was on holiday in Lebanon, and started planning her move to the country. To that end, the Lebanese had to restart part of her studies. “Since it was very bureaucratic to validate my diploma, I decided to get into college and study Computer Science at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University. Then, I got a master’s and a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo,” she told ANBA.
During her undergrad and postgrad studies, she gained experience in Computer Graphics as well as Medical Imaging Processing. And, due to a family issue, she ended up coming back to her parents’ old dream. “I decided to get a master’s and a doctoral degree in Medical Imaging since I lost a brother to cancer when he was super young. So, I focused on medical imaging to study brain tumors,” the scientist revealed.
While she was studying, Zoghbi started consulting with companies in the industry and, in the last year of her doctorate, she started her own company. “I decided to start Dr. TIS, a startup that works as a platform for medical imaging and telemedicine. We’ve grown a lot over the last two years,” she said.
With the startup, the Lebanese wants to increasingly work with artificial intelligence to generate information on the care of patients and diagnosis. The startup currently employs 15 people, and Zoghbi aims at expanding her work accross the whole country.
In 2011, she was invited to become the events director at Abcis and in 2019 she was elected as the president of the non-profit association. The institution was created to foster the exchange of knowledge and information technology practices in healthcare, an asset that’s became key against the pandemic that the world has experienced for over a year.
Fighting COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Abcis has stepped up its efforts to bring together information and data from healthcare institutions. “In 2020, we worked three times more than usual. We started hosting a weekly webinar with directors, managers and other seasoned professionals for sharing experiences. “We asked for them to share inside information on how they were dealing with COVID-19. They shared all that for free,” she explained on meetings that featured workers from flagship hospitals such as Sírio Libanês, HCor, and Santa Catarina.
In 2021, she expects the work will keep on. “To that end, over the last three months, we’ve restructured the Abcis’s board. I’ve always made sure to include women in the board. We’ve always looked for that diversity,” she stressed.
She believes a knowledge exchange with other countries, including Lebanon, is possible. “That would be great, but we still haven’t had the time to stop and think how to bridge that gap. But there certainly is much to share between Brazil and Lebanon, and doing so with my birth country would be amazing,” she finished.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
