Dr. Frank A. Papay, MD, MS, DSc(hon), FACS, FAAP, FNAI, is a physician–executive, surgeon–scientist, inventor, and healthcare systems innovator whose career spans more than three decades at Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, Ohio, USA), one of the world’s leading academic health systems. He currently serves as Chief Clinical Business Development Officer of Cleveland Clinic Enterprise and former Chairman of Dermatology and Plastic Surgery Institute, where he advises enterprise leadership on growth strategy, innovation portfolio governance, translational commercialization, and AI-enabled care delivery across a $16B+ global healthcare organization.Dr. Papay is internationally recognized for pioneering work at the intersection of advanced surgery, medical technology, and artificial intelligence. As lead surgeon for America’s first total face transplant, he helped establish the clinical, ethical, and regulatory framework for vascularized composite allotransplantation in the United States. His career includes numerous surgical “firsts,” including novel neuromodulation approaches for chronic pain and migraine, robotic endoscopic nerve reconstruction, and minimally invasive skull-base procedures that replaced high-morbidity open operations.A prolific innovator, Dr. Papay is an inventor on 40+ issued U.S. patents and 70+ provisional patents spanning surgical devices, digital platforms, neuromodulation technologies, and AI-assisted systems. He has founded and advised multiple venture-backed healthcare companies, guiding technologies from concept through first-in-human trials, regulatory pathways, and institutional capital raises. His experience includes collaboration with venture capital, private equity, and sovereign-aligned investment platforms focused on scaling healthcare innovation globally.A central focus of his recent work is the integration of artificial intelligence into clinical operations, surgical navigation, and healthcare system performance. Dr. Papay is Co-Founder of BrainX.AI, a global consortium developing machine learning systems for healthcare applications, including surgical intelligence, predictive analytics, and AI-driven decision support. His work emphasizes responsible AI adoption, clinical governance, and translating data science into measurable improvements in patient outcomes, operational efficiency, and system scalability.Dr. Papay has authored or co-authored more than 260 peer-reviewed scientific publications and multiple foundational scholarly texts. His books include Reconstructive Allotransplantation, a landmark reference in composite tissue transplantation; Virtual Surgical Planning in Surgery, advancing digital precision surgery; Voices of Innovation: Essays on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare; and Artificial Intelligence Strategies in Healthcare, where he contributes leadership perspectives on AI governance, clinical integration, and system transformation.He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and recipient of the Cleveland Clinic’s prestigious Sones Centennial Innovation Award, among many national and international honors. Across his clinical, academic, and executive roles, Dr. Papay’s work bridges medicine, engineering, and AI, shaping how intelligent technologies are responsibly deployed to build the next generation of healthcare delivery systems worldwide.Dr. Piyush Mathur, MD, FCCM, FASA FAMIA, is a Staff Anesthesiologist and Critical Care Physician at Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA, with more than 20 years of experience as a clinician. He is the Innovation Lead for the Department of Anesthesiology, Cleveland Clinic.He has also served in the role of the Quality Improvement Officer and Chair, Compliance Committee, Anesthesiology Institute for more than a decade. He completed his medical school training in India at the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC, Pune), followed by residency in Anesthesiology and a fellowship in Critical Care at Cleveland Clinic.He subsequently completed a one-year quality fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. He has completed training in computer programming, machine learning, and deep learning. He is the Past Program Director of the Anesthesiology Critical Care fellowship program at Cleveland Clinic. A recognized leader in critical care, quality, education, and artificial intelligence applications in healthcare, he has led many of the local and national programs, including serving as the chair of the post-graduate education and coding and documentation committees of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM).He is currently a member of the CPT Editorial Advisory Committee, AMA (American Medical Association) and a primary advisor to SCCM. Trained in computer programming, machine learning, and deep learning, he is the founder of BrainX, an AI in healthcare application research and development company. He also founded one of the largest groups for machine learning in healthcare, BrainX Community. He has focused his research on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare for many years. He is a leader in quality and patient safety who has innovated and successfully implemented many algorithms and tools in electronic health records such as difficult airway identification (EPIC), anesthesia awareness alert (DSS, Talis), and antibiotic alert (ACG, Talis).Recipient of multiple innovation awards at Cleveland Clinic, he is leading innovation efforts in integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence in healthcare. Current projects include AIDE (Artificial Intelligence Diagnosis Engine), SALUS (robotic artificial intelligence patient safety system), and BRAINS (Biologically Relational Artificial Intelligence Networking System).He is a recipient of numerous local and international awards including the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Permanente Award and the prestigious Presidential Citation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM). He has made numerous local, national, and international presentations and publications in the fields of anesthesiology, critical care, quality, education, and artificial intelligence applications in healthcare. For his work in the field of AI and healthcare, he was awarded the AI Clinician of the Year at the 2025 AIMed Conference.
