On Jan. 5, Dr. Christopher Longhurst began his tenure as the new Chief Executive Officer of Seattle Children’s Hospital. The Seattle Children’s Hospital Board of Trustees selected Longhurst after conducting a yearlong national search.
According to a statement by Seattle Children’s Longhurst is widely recognized as a national leader in healthcare. A practicing pediatrician and West Coast native, Longhurst currently serves as chief clinical and innovation officer at UC San Diego Health, where he spent the last decade after 15 years at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.
“Seattle Children’s has an extraordinary legacy of care, research and advocacy for kids and families, and it will be a true honor to serve and lead this world-class team to advance Children’s mission,” Longhurst said. “As a pediatrician, I understand the important role children’s hospitals play in our future health and look forward to learning from our teams and leveraging my own skills and experiences to build upon the 118-year legacy of helping every child live the healthiest life possible.”
Longhurst is the founder and executive director of the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health, where he secured a transformational philanthropic gift to establish a mission control center that deploys artificial intelligence tools to improve patient access and safety.
At UC San Diego School of Medicine, Longhurst serves as associate dean, overseeing education and research in the clinical environment, and is a faculty member in Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics. His research on care quality, patient safety and health informatics has been published in leading journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Pediatrics.
Prior to joining UC San Diego Health, Longhurst was a pediatric hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Stanford Children’s Health, where he founded the nation’s first accredited clinical informatics fellowship and led strategic efforts to improve pediatric care through technology.