Johns Hopkins Children's Center neonatologist joins NQF HIT advisory committee

Johns Hopkins Children's Center neonatologist Christoph Lehmann, M.D., has joined the nation's leading watchdog organization on health-care quality, the National Quality Forum (NQF), as a member of its newly formed Health Information Technology (HIT) advisory committee.

A nonprofit umbrella organization of hospitals, professional medical societies, teaching institutions, health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and consumer advocacy groups, the NQF aims to improve the quality of U.S. healthcare by creating standardized measures of performance and increasing public transparency of performance. Because medical information technology will be an integral component in doing so, the NQF on May 10 announced the formation of the 25-member HIT advisory committee, which will guide the organization through the health informatics revolution.

Medical information technology is slowly but surely entering mainstream medical practice and healthcare delivery and in doing so it will dramatically reshape the nature of American healthcare, says Lehmann, who is also director of clinical information technology at Hopkins Children's.

"Because this technology is becoming so widespread, we urgently need standards and principles to inform best practice and to help us avoid costly and dangerous mistakes," Lehmann says.

Developing those standards and principles will be the role of the new HIT advisory committee.

"HIT has great potential to accelerate quality improvement in healthcare," said NQF President and CEO Janet Corrigan. "We're fortunate to have such a diverse group of experts from across the healthcare system to guide NQF's work in this area. Their expertise will help guide work to ensure electronic health records and personal health records are capable of measuring and reporting on quality to drive transformations in care delivery. They will also play a key role in the integration of HIT and performance measures."

A trailblazer in the medical informatics arena, Lehmann became involved in medical information technology in the mid-1990s, long before it entered the mainstream and became a buzzword among healthcare professionals and consumers.

Lehmann has designed, developed and implemented several computer-based applications, used at Hopkins Children's and elsewhere, including a computerized ordering tool to reduce medication errors in children undergoing cancer treatment, an online infusion calculator to reduce medication errors in children undergoing IV infusions, a system that monitors lab values of critically ill preemies and alerts physicians when their scores become abnormal, and a Web-based program to approve special categories of restricted antibiotics as a faster and safer alternative to phone or fax orders.

In April 2010, Lehmann became director of Medical Informatics for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In 2009, he and George Kim, M.D., also a medical informatician at Hopkins, conceived and launched the journal Applied Medical Informatics, devoted to original research and commentary on the use of computer automation in the day-to-day practice of medicine. Lehmann and Kim are the journal's editor in chief and managing editor, respectively.

Also in 2009, Lehmann co-authored and published Pediatric Informatics, the first textbook on this subject, together with Kim and Kevin Johnson, M.D., former chief resident in pediatrics at Hopkins.

Lehmann is also the co-founder and chief information officer of Dermatlas, an open-access international Web database for pediatricians and dermatologists.