How can technology and AI help improve cancer care while keeping people at the center of the process?

In this episode of the NY Professional Spotlight Podcast with Roman Kirzhner, Roman speaks with Kyu W Hwang, a technology leader at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Kyu leads software engineering teams that build technology solutions for researchers, clinicians, and patients.

For Kyu, this work recently became deeply personal when his mother was diagnosed with gastric cancer. Her experience gave him a new view of healthcare from both the patient and caregiver side. He shares how technology helped reduce friction during her journey, from processing medical records to digital pathology and access to treatment.

Kyu also discusses the growing role of artificial intelligence in software engineering and healthcare. Rather than seeing AI simply as a replacement for people, he sees it as a tool that can help technology teams accomplish far more. At the same time, he stresses the importance of human oversight, especially in healthcare, where trust and patient safety matter.

Roman and Kyu also discuss what tomorrow’s technology professionals will need to succeed. Technical knowledge remains important, but creativity, communication, adaptability, collaboration, and other human skills are becoming increasingly valuable.

For leaders, Kyu shares another important lesson: leadership does not mean being the smartest technical person in the room. It means trusting talented people, listening to their expertise, being authentic, and building the kind of relationships that people want to follow.

The conversation also explores one of the biggest challenges in technology: successful change requires more than building a great system. People must understand it, accept it, and change how they work. That makes communication, partnership, and change management essential parts of technology leadership.

Kyu is especially excited about the potential for AI to help researchers make better use of complex cancer data and open new possibilities for research, drug discovery, and treatment.

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