Virgil Wong, Self-Portrait, 2020. Pencil, ink, and Gansai Tambi paint on paper. 8″ X 10″.
When a doctor asks you to describe your pain on a scale of one to ten, you might ask, “One to ten what?” Pain takes effort not to feel in your own body – and an even greater effort to empathize in someone else’s body.
As a child, I read a Helen Keller biography and blindfolded myself to better relate to her life. Today, I create avatars and symptom data visualizations to help physicians see their patients more clearly.
Patients use my “time travel” apps to set health goals by designing simulations of possible futures. They write their potential stories as speculative fiction to help map the best paths they wish to live.
Virgil Wong is an artist and digital technologist transforming human health.
Managing Partner, Healthcare
Chief Digital Officer
Co-Founder
Adjunct Professor
VR/AR/Design, The New School
Overview
Virgil Wong is a visual artist and digital technologist who combines traditional media with immersive and interactive technologies to explore themes of health and mortality. He trained in Renaissance painting techniques at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), human anatomy at the University of Rome Medical School, eHealth strategy at Harvard Medical School, and cognitive technologies at Columbia University. His work has appeared in The New York Times, CBS, NPR, Prevention, Forbes, and The Huffington Post.
Virgil is the co-creator of VirtualNDE.org, a virtual reality simulation of near-death experiences (NDEs), a phenomenon in which patients feel their consciousness leave their bodies in a kind of otherworldly experience. He also co-founded Medical Avatar, a digital health company using artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) to support health behavior change. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, and Deitch Projects in New York City.
In addition to his art projects, Virgil is a healthcare and technology leader who has been a keynote speaker for the American Heart Association, Health 2.0, and the Strategic CIO Forum. He is a managing partner at the world’s largest technology research and consulting firm, and he previously served as the Chief Digital Officer at HGS, a customer experience (CX) and AI company. For 15 years, he was head of digital at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine, where he developed websites and applications for patient care, research, and education.
Since 2000, Virgil has been an adjunct professor teaching AI, VR, AR, digital design, photography, and interactive media to graduate students at The New School and Parsons School of Design. He received The New School’s Faculty Mentorship Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Independent Artist
Virgil has exhibited installations, films, paintings, drawings, and prints visualizing the human body in galleries and museums around the world, including the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; and Deitch Projects in NYC. He produced and co-directed “Murmur,” an experimental film that premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. The previous year, he received a grant from the NEA for an art and medicine exhibition called “Corporeal Landscape.”
HGS
Virgil Wong was the Chief Digital Officer of HGS, a global leader in business process management and optimizing the customer experience lifecycle with 37,460 employees and 61 delivery centers in 7 countries. Over 13 years, he contributed to overall company growth, achieving 110% of the annual global revenue goal of $754M in FY23 with a forecast plan target of $685M. He delivered a 5.7 : 1 ROI that year (5.7X booked revenue that was sourced and supported versus total spend). Previously, as head of the DX practice at HGS Digital, he increased revenue year over year by 25% to 30%, led sales strategy, and delivered successful outcomes for dozens of enterprise clients.
Medical Avatar
He is also co-founder and former CEO of Medical Avatar LLC, a digital health company creating time travel simulations to improve healthcare delivery, reduce health care costs, and improve outcomes.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medicine
Virgil founded the in-house interactive division for Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. For 15 years, he defined the Internet strategy for both institutions and created a portfolio of 120 web sites and over 76,000 web pages. WeillCornell.org was one of the first successful academic healthcare portals in New York, which empowered patients with their own medical records and the ability to interact with their doctors online. Virgil’s team won nearly 50 eHealthcare Leadership Awards, a leading industry recognition for healthcare on the Internet. In 2010, his team helped to raise over $100,000 online for Weill Cornell’s GHESKIO clinic after the earthquake disaster in Haiti. Virgil also served as co-chair of the Clinical & Translational Research Science Center (CTSC) Cross-Institutional Web Portal Working Group, whose mission is to leverage new technologies in rapidly moving advanced biomedical research from the laboratory to the patient.
The New School / Parsons School of Design
Since 2000, he has also been an adjunct professor in The New School Masters in Media Studies Program, now teaching virtual reality, photography, film, and interactive media. He received The New School’s Faculty Mentorship Award for Outstanding Teaching Award in 2005.
