David Classen, MD, MS

Dr. Classen is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah and a Consultant in Infectious Diseases at The University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr. Classen serves as a consulting CMIO advisor to Pascal.

He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and a Masters of Science degree in medical informatics from the University of Utah School Of Medicine. He served as Chief Medical Resident at the University of Connecticut. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He developed the medication safety programs at Intermountain Healthcare; was the chair of Intermountain Health Cares Clinical Quality Committee for Drug Use and Evaluation; and was also the initial developer of patient safety research and patient safety programs at Intermountain Healthcare. In addition, he developed, implemented and evaluated a computerized physician order entry program at LDS Hospital that significantly improved the safety of medication use.

Dr. Classen is one of the co-developers of the “trigger” tool methodology at IHI, which resulted in the release of the Global Trigger Tool (GTT). The GTT is used to measure all-cause harm and has been used by more than 500 different healthcare organizations worldwide. The evidence-based trigger methodology provided an initial foundation for generating clinically validated adverse event outcomes using electronic healthcare record (EHR) data.

Dr. Classen was a member of the National Academy of Medicine committee (under its predecessor name, Institute of Medicine (IOM)) that developed the National Healthcare Quality Report and was also a member of the IOM Committee on Patient Safety Data Standards and was a member of the IOM Committee on Health Information Technology and Patient Safety.

He chaired the QUIC (federal patient safety taskforce) with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Collaborative on Improving Safety in High Hazard Areas. He was Co-Chair of the IHI’s Collaborative on Perioperative Safety and the Surgical Safety Collaborative. He was also a faculty member of the IHI/National Health Foundation Safer Patients Initiative in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Classen currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum’s AHRQ Common Formats Committee and is an advisor to the Leapfrog Group. He has developed and implemented the CPOE/EHR flight simulator for AHRQ and National Quality Forum. This EHR Flight simulator has been used to evaluate hundreds of inpatient and ambulatory EHR systems following implementation of EHRs across the United States and The United Kingdom. The EHR Flight Simulator is now a critical part of the National Quality Forum’s Safe Practice #16 for Computerized Provider Order Entry within EHRs.

Updated Jan 2023