Chicago physician informaticist Dr. Julio Silva has been named chief of health informatics at the Sidra Medical and Research Center for women and children now under construction in Doha, Qatar, the hospital has announced.
Silva is VP of clinical systems and chief medical information officer at Rush University Medical Center and also served as medical director and VP of MetroChicago HIE, a regional health information exchange organization.
In Qatar, Silva will oversee the development and implementation of the new hospital's Patient Electronically Accessible Record for Life, or PEARL, an electronic health record system billed as “a comprehensive communications system that will help register, schedule and track a patient throughout his or her hospital stay and beyond,” according to a news release.
Silva was named in 2012 as one of Modern Healthcare's top 25 Clinical Informaticists for his work at Rush, including leading the implementation of core measures dashboards and overseeing the creation of hundreds of data collection templates for its EHR system.
“The commitment shown by the senior leadership team (at Silva) to provide future patients and partners with access to the best technology and talent and the excitement around the opening of the hospital is contagious,” Silva said in the release.
Another Chicagoan, Dr. Timothy McDonald, has been named medical director of quality and safety and chief of anesthesiology at the Qatar hospital. McDonald is a pediatric anesthesiologist with a law degree. He was chief safety and risk officer for health affairs at the University of Illinois, a professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and adjunct professor of law at Loyola University Law School.
The new hospital has been hiring U.S. executives since 2012.
Reports from Middle East news outlets have the hospital of about 400 beds becoming fully operational in 2015.
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