The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has chosen Christoph Lehmann, M.D., a neonatologist at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, to lead its newly created Child Health Informatics Center.
According to the Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based organization, one of Lehmann’s first assignments will be to design a model electronic pediatric health record as a prototype for pediatricians and hospitals. As the founding director, Lehmann will develop, implement and oversee informatics programs to help pediatricians and pediatric hospitals in their adoption of tools such as EMRs, computer-based medication delivery systems and computer-based patient safety programs.
Lehmann has designed several computer-based applications (used at Hopkins Children’s and elsewhere), including a computerized order tool to reduce medication errors in children undergoing cancer treatment, 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 safer alternative to phone or fax orders, says AAP.
Lehmann and George Kim, M.D., also a medical informatician at Hopkins, launched the journal Applied Medical Informatics. 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.
