Biography
Dr. Saif Khairat is the Beerstecher-Blackwell Distinguished Term Scholar and Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Khairat holds joint appointments at the Carolina Health Informatics Program, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, and the School of Nursing.
Dr. Khairat is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the NIH-funded Center for Virtual Care Value and Equity (ViVE) and the Director of the multi-million dollar Carolina Applied Health Informatics (CAIR) lab. With over 15 years of experience, Dr. Khairat has led numerous national and international funded projects to enhance healthcare services and research, particularly in informatics. His research agenda focuses on two main areas: (1) telemedicine to bridge health disparities and (2) health IT usability to improve patient safety.
Dr. Khairat has authored over100 influential scientific articles in over 35 different peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Moreover, he has been an investigator for over $7.5 million in research grants over the past five years. He is a digital health and informatics expert who researches the development, implementation, and evaluation of Health IT solutions to enhance health equity and access, specifically in virtual care. His work has been featured in major media outlets, including the Harvard Business Review (HBR), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the AHRQ Patient Safety Net (PSNET).
Internationally, Dr. Khairat provides expert opinions on Digital Health and Innovation to the World Health Organization (WHO). He assists nations in achieving and maintaining digital health transformation within their healthcare systems by performing needs analyses, building capacity, developing best practices, and offering actionable recommendations. Additionally, he is an advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to create a national policy and strategy for a telehealth framework targeting non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Khairat is a leader within the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). He was inducted among the inaugural class of Fellows of AMIA in 2019. He serves as a Chair of the Education Committee. Dr. Khairat earned his PhD in Health Informatics, bachelor’s and master’s in Computer Science from the University of Missouri, and an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Gilling’s School of Global Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For more information on Dr. Khairat’s research lab, please visit: The CAIR Group
To read more, please visit: Faces of AMIA
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