Christopher Longhurst, MD, has been named chief medical information officer at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. In his role, Longhurst will focus on ways to extend digital data to patients and families to improve the continuum of care, he said.
"Chris is a nationally-recognized medical informatics specialist with tremendous experience in clinical transformation, electronic medical records and computer provider order entry implementation," said Ed Kopetsky, chief information officer at Packard Children's.
The hospital rolled out CPOE in 2007. Since that time, Longhurst said, it has been building on that platform by using CPOE to facilitate clinical resource management.
Longhurst noted that teams at the hospital have been rigorously evaluating the outcomes of CPOE and electronic medical records, and recently received global recognition for a study that showed for the first time a decrease In mortality associated with CPOE.
In his CMIO capacity, Longhurst will lead clinical information strategy and adoption and also serve on the Information Services Executive Committee.
Longhurst received his medical degree from UC Davis along with a master's degree in medical informatics, both in 2001. After completing his pediatric residency at Stanford in 2004, he became physician lead and later medical director of clinical informatics at Packard Children's while continuing clinical duties as a pediatric hospitalist.
