Research Mentors

Learn more about the Research Mentors behind the Patients Improving Research in Diagnosis (PAIRED) initiative.

Robert El-Kareh, MD, MPH

UCSD Hospital Medicine

Robert El-Kareh, MD, MPH, is a board-certified internal medicine physician who specializes in caring for hospitalized patients. As a hospitalist, Dr. El-Kareh is assigned to patients at the time of admission and provides care only during their hospital stay. He does not see patients at outpatient clinics and is not available for appointments. Upon a patient’s discharge, Dr. El-Kareh communicates with their regular physician to ensure quality care.

Full Biography

Dr. El-Kareh has a joint appointment between the divisions of Biomedical Informatics and Hospital Medicine.

As an associate professor in the Department of Medicine, he instructs medical students, residents, and fellows at UC San Diego School of Medicine. He conducts research in clinical informatics and quality improvement, focusing on the use of health information technology to improve the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of the diagnostic process as well as improving medication reconciliation, communication, and test result management.

He completed a research fellowship in biomedical informatics at Harvard University and also earned an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. El-Kareh completed his residency in internal medicine at Alpert Medical School, Brown University, where he served for a fourth year as chief resident. Dr. El-Kareh earned his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine.

Prashant Mahajan, MD, MPH, MBA

University of Michigan, Department of Emergency Medicine

Prashant Mahajan, MD, MPH, MBA joined the University of Michigan Department of Emergency Medicine as Vice-Chair of Emergency Medicine and Division Chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. Previously, Dr. Mahajan was at the Wayne State University and the Children’s Hospital of Michigan where he was Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, and Division Chief of Emergency Medicine in the Carman & Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics.

Full Biography

He is also Medical Director for the Children’s Research Center of Michigan and Director for the Center for Quality and Innovation at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. Nationally, Dr. Mahajan Chairs the Executive Committee overseeing the Emergency Medicine Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Dr. Mahajan received his MD at the University of Bombay, India and completed his EM residency and fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Michigan. He received his MPH from the University of Michigan and his MBA from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Mahajan is a founding member of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) and has an impressive track record of research publications, federal research funding, and mentorship of junior investigators. His current NIH R01 grant focuses on the innovative use of RNA biosignatures in the management of febrile infants. In addition to his research experience, Dr. Mahajan’s has administrative experience and expertise in clinical operations.

Kathryn McDonald, PhD

Johns Hopkins schools of Nursing and Medicine

Kathryn McDonald is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Systems, Quality, and Safety at the Johns Hopkins schools of Nursing and Medicine, with joint appointments in the Carey Business School and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her work focuses on measures and interventions to achieve evidence-based patient-centered healthcare quality and patient safety.

Full Biography

McDonald previously served as executive director of CHP/PCOR and a senior scholar at the centers, and as associate director of the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-based Practice Center (under RAND). During that time she served as a project director and principal investigator on a number of research projects at the Stanford School of Medicine, including the development and ongoing enhancement of the Quality and Patient Safety Indicators for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and government reports, including several with enough followers to merit recent updates: Care Coordination Measures Atlas, Closing the Quality Gap, and Patient Safety Practices. She served on the Institute of Medicine Committee that produced Measuring What Matters: Pediatric and Adolescent Health and Health Care and currently is part of the IOM Committee on Diagnostic Errors in Health Care.

Previously, she worked as a manager for technology optimization and business development at Stanford Hospital, and as a research and development manager for new product development for a medical device company. She received a PhD in Health Policy from UC Berkeley with a specialization in organizations and managements, a master of management degree (MBA and MHA equivalent) from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, with an emphasis on the healthcare industry, and she holds a BS in chemical engineering from Stanford University.

Gordon Schiff, MD

Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care

Gordon Schiff, MD, is a general internist and Quality and Safety Director for the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. He is Associate Director of Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He worked for more than three decades at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital where he directed the general medicine clinic and chaired the hospital’s quality improvement committee and was PI for the AHRQ Developmental Center for Patient Safety Research focusing on diagnostic errors (the Diagnosis Evaluation and Education Research (DEER) Project).

Full Biography

He directed a four-year AHRQ-funded Massachusetts malpractice and patient safety improvement PROMISES project (Proactive Reduction in Outpatient Malpractice: Improving Safety Efficiency and Satisfaction), was PI for the AHRQ-Brigham medication safety HIT CERT CEDAR (Calling for Earlier Detection of Adverse Reaction) Project, and has led multiple projects funded by the Harvard Risk Management Foundation to study diagnostic errors, pitfalls, and develop tools to help prevent and minimize such errors.

He was PI for an AHRQ HIT Safety grant working to enhance CPOE by incorporating the drug indication into prescription ordering. He currently directs two large projects funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, one focusing on improving diagnosis safety and quality and the other to promote more appropriate and conservative medication prescribing. The diagnosis project, the PRIDE (Primary-care Research in Diagnosis Errors) Learning Network, is working to study and improve diagnosis by sharing diagnosis cases from an unprecedented coalition of local and national stakeholders with interest and expertise in diagnosis safety.

He is author of numerous articles on patient safety, diagnosis error, test management, lab-pharmacy linkages, health IT and medication safety. He edited a book published by Joint Commission Resources on handling critical test results, Getting Results: Reliably Communicating and Acting on Critical Test Results. He is chair of the editorial board of Medical Care, and on the editorial boards of the Journal Public Health Policy and BMJ Quality and Safety. He is a founder and past co-chair of the International Diagnosis Errors in Medicine conferences and member of several WHO international initiatives to improve diagnosis and medication safety worldwide. He is the recipient of the 2005 Institute of Medicine Chicago (IOMC) Patient Safety Leader of the Year award, the Institute for Safe Medical Practices (ISMP) 2006 Lifetime Achievement award, the 2010 Rx for Excellence in Quality Award from the Massachusetts Medical Law Report, and a 2017 Partners in Excellence Award for leading the Brigham team working on indications based prescribing. In 2006 he was selected by Modern Healthcare as one of the top “30 People for the Future” in medicine.

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Latest Research in Improving Diagnosis

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Research Mentors

Learn more about the Research Mentors behind the Patients Improving Research in Diagnosis (PAIRED) initiative.

Robert El-Kareh, MD, MPH

Prashant Mahajan, MD, MPH, MBA

Kathryn McDonald, PhD

Gordon Schiff, MD

Meet the Patient Partners

Latest Research in Improving Diagnosis

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