Professor Nai-Wen Kuo took office as the Dean of the College of Management on January 01, 2021. Before that, he served as the Dean of the College of Public Health. Under his leadership, the TMU College of Public Health became a critical think tank of the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare. He assists the Taiwan Center for Disease Control in expanding its international cooperation network, including collaborations with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a TB Control and Prevention Project with the Quang-Ninh Province of Vietnam. The TMUCPH also partnered with world-renowned universities, such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Yale University, and the National University of Singapore.

Dean Kuo has managed Taipei Medical University’s international affairs from October 2011 to August 2016. During his term as the Dean of International Affairs, he was responsible for all aspects of TMU’s international activities, including foreign student recruitment, counseling, related services, international student and faculty exchanges, partner university relations and communications, international research collaborations, and medical mission operations.

He joined the university in 1997 as a professor of Health Care Administration. Before serving as Dean of International Affairs, he was appointed to many important positions within and beyond the university, including terms as TMU Press Director, Director of the School of Health Care Administration, the university’s Chief Secretary, Advisor to Taipei City Hospital, and as Chief Surveyor for Hospital Accreditation appointed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Dean Kuo previously served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Taipei City Hospital, a 4200-bed, nine-hospital system operated by the capital city’s government. His primary responsibilities in this role included daily managing operations of a major hospital system, including quality improvement projects and financial analyses. Dean Kuo also served as Vice Superintendent of Taipei Medical University Hospital from 2000 to 2002. Under his management, this hospital turned a history of losses into its first profit-making year in 2002.

Dean Kuo is among Taiwan’s few healthcare administration educators who have held numerous leadership positions. He serves on the board of directors of critical academic societies such as the Taiwan College of Healthcare Executives. Dean Kuo’s research interests include healthcare quality, clinical pathways, patient safety, and healthcare facility design. Dean Kuo authorizes over 70 publications, including journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports. 

He received his Ph.D. in Health Policy and Management from Johns Hopkins University in 1997, following his 1992 MPH in Health Care Administration from Yale University. He also served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2009 to 2010.

We closely cooperate with the International Society of Quality in Health Care (ISQua) and Taiwan Joint Commission in the field of patient safety and healthcare quality improvement.

In the past, advisees of Dr. Kuo have devoted themselves to research on hospital patient safety culture in many countries, including Vietnam, Belize, Gambia, Eswatini, the Republic of Marshall Island, etc. We also utilize some US government open data to research the incidence rates of central line-associated bloodstream infection in California community hospitals and published on the PLOS One.