Director, KEV.AI Lab Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Helen and Nicholas Abumrad Director | Vice Chair for Innovation, Section of Surgical Sciences CEO & Co-Founder, SchoolMe
kevin.sexton@vumc.org • LinkedIn • ORCID • Google Scholar
Bio
Kevin Sexton is a trauma and acute care surgeon, board-certified clinical informaticist, and healthcare AI entrepreneur. He directs the KEV.AI Lab at VUMC, where he leads research at the intersection of surgery, clinical informatics, and artificial intelligence, and serves as Vice Chair for Innovation in the Section of Surgical Sciences.
As CEO of SchoolMe, he builds adaptive AI-powered learning platforms for medical education, currently deployed with partners including the American College of Surgeons and ChenMed. SchoolMe is licensed from VUMC and is the translational outlet for the lab’s AI-in-education research.
Kev moved to Vanderbilt in October 2024 to scale this work at one of the top academic medical centers in the United States. Before VUMC, he served as Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, where his portfolio covered innovation, research, entrepreneurship, and all enterprise EMR integrations and software negotiations — including Doximity’s first Epic Dialer integration. He subsequently served as President and Director of BioVentures LLC, the UAMS technology transfer office.
Entrepreneurial Track Record
Kev has a track record of building and exiting deep-tech healthcare companies:
- CredenceHealth — Predictive software for surgical complications. Commercialized as Midas+ Live™, acquired by Xerox/ACS.
- Venous Waveform Monitoring — Novel peripheral venous pressure monitoring technology. Licensed to Baxter International.
- SchoolMe — AI-powered adaptive learning for medical education. Active enterprise partnerships with ACS and ChenMed; additional partnerships in development.
Named inventor on 17 issued and pending patents spanning medical devices, digital health, and AI. Patent portfolio on Lens.org.
Research Program
$35M+ in federally funded research as PI or Co-PI, including:
- ARPA-H — Democratized, AI-Guided Chart Abstraction Platform ($1.98M; Co-I)
- NIH NIGMS R01 GM111324 — Trauma Institutional Priorities and Teams for Outcome Efficacy ($1.88M; MPI)
- NIH NCATS T32 TR004918 — Health Sciences Innovation & Entrepreneurship Training Program ($948K; PI)
- U.S. Department of Commerce — Arkansas Collaborative for Technological and Innovative Venture Equality (ACTIVE, $3.75M; PI)
- Prior PI/Co-PI roles with SAMHSA, HRSA, DOD, and NIH NCATS totaling $30M+
Full publication list on PubMed and Google Scholar.
Academic Credentials
- MD — University of Kentucky College of Medicine, 2007 (High Distinction, Class Rank 1/95)
- BS, Biology — University of Kentucky, 2002 (Summa Cum Laude)
- Residency, General Surgery — Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 2015
- Research Fellowships — Vascular and Plastic Surgery (Vanderbilt)
Board Certification
- American Board of Surgery (2016 – present)
- American Board of Preventive Medicine — Clinical Informatics subspecialty (2021 – present) (held by fewer than 5% of surgeons nationally)
Epic
- Epic-certified Physician Builder
- Epic-certified Analytics & Report Writing
Professional Leadership
- Chair, Surgical and Procedural Informatics Working Group, American Medical Informatics Association (founded)
- American Hernia Society — Grants Committee, Center of Excellence Designation Committee, Conflict of Interest Committee
- Reviewer, National Science Foundation Digital Health Study Section
- Selection Committee, VentureWell Biomedical Innovation (since 2013)
- Fellow, American College of Surgeons
Honors & Recognition
- Helen and Nicholas Abumrad Directorship, VUMC (endowed leadership position)
- UAMS Red Sash Award for exemplary teaching of medical students (2016, 2017, 2019)
- Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism Honor Society
- Phi Beta Kappa
Contact
Best reached by email at kevin.sexton@vumc.org (academic and clinical) or kevin@schoolme.me (company).
For media inquiries, see the Contact page.