Zviad Kirtava holds an Academic Doctorate in Medicine and is a Professor at Caucasus University School of Medicine, where he also serves as Head of the Medical Doctor Program.
Professor Kirtava represented Georgia on the European Health Committee of the Council of Europe, served as a member of the Committee’s Bureau from 2003 to 2011, and held the position of Chair from 2005 to 2006. From 2000 to 2004, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the British Medical Journal (BMJ). As an expert for the European Commission, he participated in the evaluation of projects under several major EU scientific frameworks, including FP4, FP6, FP7, and Horizon 2020. He was also involved in a number of COST programme initiatives of the European Commission, including Econ@Tel – Economics of Telecommunications (2005–2011), ADAPT – Migrant Health (2010–2014), InterFaSol – Intergenerational Family Solidarity (2016–2018), and PUI – the European Network on Problematic Usage of the Internet (2018–2023). Since 2017, he has been a member of the Coordinating Board of the BMJ eLearning Georgia Project. Since 2022, he has served as a member of the Sectoral Council for Higher Medical Education, and since 2024, as an invited member of the Accreditation and Authorization Councils in the field of Medicine.
After graduating from Tbilisi State Medical University, Professor Kirtava completed postgraduate studies and defended his dissertation at the Institute of Rheumatology in Moscow, focusing on Sjögren’s syndrome. He later undertook multiple research fellowships at Malmö University Hospital, Sweden. He has completed specialized training in medical informatics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA; in telemedicine and e-health at the University of Tromsø, Norway, and the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, USA; and in healthcare administration through a joint curriculum offered by Georgia State University and the University of Scranton, USA. He has also completed courses offered by the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) in 2021 and 2022.
Under his leadership, the organization Partners for Health implemented numerous projects in public health and medical informatics, as well as innovative initiatives in telemedicine, e-health, and mobile telemedicine. These projects were funded by a wide range of international donors, including the World Health Organization (WHO), USAID/AIHA, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, SIDA, CRDF Global, Partnership for Peace, DoD/ONRG, ISN, and the Council of Europe, as well as local funding bodies such as the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation and the Georgian Technology Development Foundation.
Professor Kirtava is the author of more than 110 scientific publications and has delivered over 40 presentations at international conferences on topics including e-health and mobile health, telemedicine, distance learning, problematic internet use (internet addiction), internal medicine, rheumatology, medical education, public health, and clinical pharmacology.
Since 2026, he has served as Principal Investigator of the Rustaveli Foundation-funded project, “Problematic Internet Use Among Young People: Scope and Impact on Health,” implemented jointly by Caucasus University and the International Black Sea University.