Christopher Longhurst MD, MS, is the chief medical officer (CMO) and chief digital officer (CDO) at UC San Diego Health. This dual, complementary role provides leadership to medical staff, ensuring that standards and protocols are in place to provide the highest quality of care to patients. He also serves as an associate dean at the School of Medicine, overseeing and aligning our education and research missions within the clinical environment, and leading our journey to become a highly reliable, learning health system.
As CMO, Dr. Longhurst is responsible for maintaining excellence in clinical care, including regulatory, patient and clinician satisfaction, quality and safety, and medical affairs. He works alongside leaders at UC San Diego Health, the School of Medicine, and UC Health to improve care delivery and oversees UC San Diego Health’s reputation for delivering safe, innovative, patient-centered care.
Dr. Longhurst is passionate about implementing innovative digital solutions that help improve the patient experience. As the CDO, he leads UC San Diego Health’s technology strategy, overseeing initiatives that advance the infrastructure across UC San Diego and the UC Health system. In addition, Dr. Longhurst leads the clinical activities of the academic medical center, working alongside clinical leaders to guide the planning of quality, safety, and performance excellence of programs.
He 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.
Prior to his current role, Dr. Longhurst served as the chief information officer (2015-2021) and associate chief medical officer for quality and safety (2018-2021) at UC San Diego Health, where he provided leadership in key functional areas to continuously improve efforts around operations, reputation and care.
Before joining UC San Diego Health, Dr. Longhurst served as chief medical information officer for Stanford Children's Health. 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. He also staffed the quality committee of Stanford's hospital board and facilitated national quality improvement collaborative work.
Dr. Longhurst completed his residency at Stanford University and earned his medical degree and MS in medical informatics from UC Davis. He holds a BS in molecular biology from Revelle College at UC San Diego. He is a board-certified pediatrician and clinical informaticist.
He is the author and co-author of many publications on using technology and data to improve quality of care. Dr. Longhurst is an elected fellow of the prestigious American College of Medical Informatics.
