• Bioinformatics
• Digital health innovation and technology
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in medicine
• Single cell analytics
• Gut microbiome metagenomics
• Digital health education
• AI in medical education
• Research ethics related to AI and big data

Professor Joshua Ho is the Assistant Dean (Innovation & Technology Transfer), Co-Director of Master of Biomedical Innovation, and Associate Professor in the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed). He completed his BSc (Hon 1, Medal) and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Sydney, and undertook postdoctoral training in at Harvard Medical School. He is an expert in bioinformatics, digital health, and medical AI. Professor Ho has over 155 publications, including first- or senior-author papers in leading journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, Genome Biology, and Cell Systems. Professor Ho is also the Deputy Director of EdTech (AI), and Academic Lead of the Bioinformatics Core of the Centre for PanorOmic Sciences (CPOS) at HKUMed. He co-founded a digital health company Vitome Limited.

• BSc (Hon with University Medal) in Biochemistry and Computer Science, University of Sydney
• PhD in Bioinformatics, University of Sydney
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard Medical School

The HKU Bioinformatics and Digital Health Laboratory focuses, led by Professor Joshua Ho, in basic and translational medicine. A range of specific research projects can be developed within the broad theme of scalable big data analytics and AI for healthcare translation. Here are some major research topics in the laboratory

1. Scalable single cell data analytics: Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) enables researchers to study heterogeneity among tens of thousands of individual cells and define cell types from a transcriptomic perspective. However, fast and reliable analysis of these large and noisy data requires new statistical and computational considerations. In this project we will develop scalable bioinformatics and experimental methods to analyze a range of single cell transcriptomics and genomics data to answer important biomedical questions.
2. Digital health innovation and medical artificial intelligence (AI): Being able to track the changes of a person's physiological parameters in real time is now increasingly feasible due to the wide availability of consumer-grade smartphones and wearable devices. Our group is developing new big data and AI algorithms to extract, process, analyse and correlate various physiological data. Our long-term goal is to establish new non-invasive screening tools to monitor a person's health status.
3. Microbiome functional systems biology through metagenomic and multi-omic data analysis: Our laboratory develops computational and statistical tools that can efficiently process large metagenomic data, and integrate them with other omics or deep phenotyping data. Our goal is to understand how the microbiome found in specific location of the body, e.g., the gut, can affect a person's health.

1. Ma S, Chan YH, Ngai ECH, Ho JWK (2025) Asynchronous and focal federated learning for skin lesion classification under local data scarcity and class imbalance. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 272, 109073
2. Chen J, Yin D, Wong HYH, Duan X, Yu KHO^, Ho JWK^ (2024) Vulture: Cloud-enabled scalable mining of microbial reads in public scRNA-seq data. GigaScience, 13, giad117
3. Ma S, Chen J, Ho JWK (2024) An edge-device-compatible algorithm for valvular heart diseases screening using phonocardiogram signals with a lightweight convolutional neural network and self-supervised learning. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 243, 107906
4. Zheng W, Fong JHC, Wan YK, Chu AHY, Huang Y, Ho JWK (2023) Discovery of regulatory motifs in 5′ untranslated regions using interpretable multi-task learning models. Cell Systems, 14(12), P1103-1112.E6
5. Lin X, Chau C, Ma K, Huang Y^, Ho JWK^ (2023) DCATS: differential composition analysis for flexible single-cell experimental designs. Genome Biology, 24, 151
6. Kwok AWC, Qiao C, Huang R, Sham MH, Ho JWK^, Huang ^ (2022) MQuad enables clonal substrcuture discovery using single cell mitochondrial variants. Nature Communications, 13, 1205
7. Zhou L*, Yu KHO*, Wong TL*, Zhang Z, Chan CH, Loon JHC, Che N, Yu HJ, Tan KV, Tong M, Ngan ES, Ho JWK^, Ma SKY^ (2022) Lineage tracing and single-cell analysis reveal proliferative Prom1+ tumour-propagating cells and their dynamic cellular transition during liver cancer progression. Gut, 71, 1656-1668
8. Wong JYH, Luk LYF, Yip TF, Lee TTL, Wai AKC^, Ho JWK^ (2022) Incidence of Emergency Department Visits for Sexual Abuse Among Youth in Hong Kong Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 5(10), e2236278
9. Lin P, Troup M, Ho JWK (2017) CIDR: Ultrafast and accurate clustering through imputation for single-cell RNA-seq data. Genome Biology, 18, 59
10. Ho JWK*, Jung YL*, Liu T* et al. (2014) Comparative analysis of metazoan chromatin organization. Nature, 512(7515), 449-452

• Jul 2024, 港大醫學院新增AI課程 增學生臨床診症經驗, https://news.now.com/home/local/player?newsId=568147  
• Jul 2024, 手機也能當隨身聽診器　港大新發明助實時檢測心瓣疾病: https://www.tkww.hk/a/202407/31/AP66a9ed24e4b0519806948ad4.html  
• Jul 2024, University of Hong Kong creates app to detect heart valve diseases by checking chest sounds: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3272654/university-hong-kong-creates-app-detect-heart-valve-diseases-checking-chest-sounds
• Aug 2024, Hong Kong-developed mobile stethoscope app detects heart disease: https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/asia/hong-kong-developed-mobile-stethoscope-app-detects-heart-disease
• Oct 2025, From Stethoscope to smartphone: How Vitome is redefining heart screening: https://healthtechasia.co/from-stethoscope-to-smartphone-how-vitome-is-redefining-heart-screening/

• 2006 University Medal, University of Sydney
• 2015 Illumina Early Career Researcher Award, Australian Epigenetics Alliance
• 2015 NSW Ministerial Award for Rising Stars in Cardiovascular Research
• 2016 Young Tall Poppy Science Award, Australian Institute of Policy and Science
• 2022 Research Output Prize, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong
• 2023 Faculty Teaching Medal, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong
• 2024 Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury, 49th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva
• 2025 Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury, 50th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva