Stephen L. Jones

I am a health care informaticist dedicated to raising the standard of care for all patients worldwide. I have a broad range of experience, training, expertise, and leadership skills, including as Principal Investigator on a large, multi-institutional (5 organizations), multi-site (14 study sites across the Texas Gulf Coast). I am driven by a deep, personal, passion for improving the health care system. I graduated from medical school and entered an internal medicine residency program in 1995. It was during this time that I was first exposed to the field of medical informatics and found my true calling in medicine. I spent the next 7 years founding a clinical documentation software company and architecting a widely used commercial electronic prescribing solution, which is still in use today. I reentered the academic community in 2007 to continue my quest to elevate the standard of care for as many people as possible. Since 2007 I have completed a Master of Science in Health Informatics at The University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics and completed a post-doctoral fellowship sponsored by the NLM and administered through the Gulf Coast Consortia and the Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience training (NLM Grant No. 5T15LM007093). My fellowship project was to architect a semi-automated sepsis screening system to identify patients at risk for developing sepsis while they are hospitalized. The fellowship project work-product is part of an initiative that has saved over 1,100 lives over the past nearly 10 years at Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston TX and was a significant part of the foundation of a successful application to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Health Care Innovation Challenge Award to The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in the summer of 2012. The Sepsis Early Recognition and Response Initiative (SERRI) saw the program implemented across 14 different sites and in 3 very different health care settings. I oversaw and was directly involved in the management and implementation of the entire project across 5 different organizations. My ongoing research recognizes the very high value that bedside nurses have in caring for and, very importantly, detecting changes in condition that must be appropriately intervened upon to prevent harm and improve outcomes. Sepsis is just one example of several where this model appears to have validity. My years of experience working in partnership with bedside nurses, nurse educators, and nursing leadership have provided unique insights into the often chaotic and dynamic work environments where these professionals practice their art.