Christopher Longhurst

As chief information officer (CIO) for UC San Diego Health, Christopher Longhurst MD, MS, oversees all operations and strategic planning for information and communications technology. He is also responsible for planning and developing all administrative and clinical information systems related to operating UC San Diego Health hospital and clinical facilities. Dr. Longhurst leads the creation and execution of a comprehensive information strategy to meet future needs of UC San Diego Health along with creating standards, architectures and policies for information technologies across UC San Diego and the UC system. His area of responsibility includes electronic health records and the MyUCSDChart system. UC San Diego Health has reached Stage 7 of electronic medical record (EMR) adoption, a ranking devised by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). This distinction is achieved by less than five percent of U.S. hospitals. Dr. Longhurst is also a key faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the UC San Diego School of Medicine. He most recently served as chief medical information officer for Stanford Children’s Health, where he led strategic efforts to improve children’s health and provider workflow using information technology. He also founded and led the clinical informatics fellowship at Stanford, where he was a clinical professor of pediatrics. Dr. Longhurst completed his residency at Stanford Medical School and earned his medical degree and MS in medical informatics from UC Davis. He holds a BS in molecular biology from UC San Diego. He is a board-certified pediatrician and clinical informaticist. The author and co-author of many publications on using technology and data to improve patient care and outcomes, Dr. Longhurst was elected a fellow in the prestigious American College of Medical Informatics. In 2017 he was honored with a San Diego Top Tech Exec award.