Our Team

Passionate about transforming healthcare through innovation, Dr. Chris Longhurst is the visionary leader at the helm of the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation. With a rich background in medicine and informatics, he spearheads groundbreaking initiatives that drive positive change in the digital healthcare landscape, ultimately helping to improve the patient experience.

As combined Chief Medical Officer and Chief Digital Officer, he leads UC San Diego Health’s technology strategy, driving initiatives that advance the infrastructure across UC San Diego and the UC Health system, while also overseeing the clinical activities of the academic medical center.

Dr. Longhurst is also a key faculty member in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, maintaining an active clinical practice as a newborn hospitalist and pursuing scholarship in care quality, patient safety, and health informatics.

Before joining UC San Diego Health, Dr. Longhurst 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 founded and led the nation's first accredited clinical informatics fellowship at Stanford, where he was a clinical professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics.

As an advocate for digital health on a broader scale, he has contributed his expertise to industry forums, collaborated with policymakers to shape healthcare legislation, and mentored emerging leaders in the field of digital health.

Dr. Longhurst - an elected fellow of the prestigious American College of Medical Informatics - has authored several publications on using technology and data to improve quality of care.