Advancing Diagnostic Excellence Through Applied Clinical Informatics: Outcomes Feedback, Decision Support and Opportunity Surveillance

March 10th, 2026

Healthcare organizations increasingly rely on informatics to strengthen diagnostic performance and reduce preventable harm. This presentation highlights three complementary initiatives from UC San Diego that are designed to advance diagnostic excellence across the care continuum. First, Dr. El-Kareh will describe an informatics approach that provides clinicians with individualized feedback on post handoff patient outcomes to enhance diagnostic learning. Second, he will present point of care decision support tools that guide appropriate diagnostic testing and reduce unnecessary variation. Finally, he will introduce a piloted organizational surveillance system that identifies cases warranting diagnostic review through longitudinal analysis of diagnostic codes. I aim to provide practical insights into applying informatics to support diagnostic excellence.

Robert El-Kareh

Robert El-Kareh is a Professor of Medicine within the Division of Biomedical Informatics at the University of California, San Diego. He serves as Associate Chief Medical Officer for Transformation and Learning and leads the Clinical Decision Support Oversight Committee at UC San Diego Health. One area of focus is improving clinical informatics workflows to support quality and patient safety—especially diagnostic safety. At the School of Medicine, he serves as Executive Director of Continuing Professional Development. Through these roles he is involved in ongoing efforts to support UC San Diego Health as a learning health system. Clinically, he is a practicing hospital medicine physician and is board-certified in Clinical Informatics.