Curtis (Curt) Kennedy is a native Texan who graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1993 with degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He obtained his Medical Doctorate from Baylor College of Medicine in 1997, and he remained at Baylor College of Medicine for his residency in Pediatrics, which he completed in 2000, and his fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, which he completed in 2003. During his fellowship, Curt began his training in Informatics at the University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences (McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston, formerly UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics SBMI), earning his Master’s degree in 2006. Upon completing his Master’s education, he enrolled in the Doctorate program, completed his PhD in 2010, and graduated in 2011. While Curt has been involved in many informatics related initiatives during his training, his primary focus and the subject of his Doctoral research is in using time series analysis to create prediction models for adverse events in the pediatric intensive care unit: cardiac arrest being his principle interest.
Curt has been employed as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Critical Care Section at Baylor College of Medicine / Texas Children’s Hospital since 2003. He has served in numerous informatics related roles during his career, ranging from the evaluation, selection, planning, and implementation of the Epic EMR system, to leadership in the Information Management Executive Committee, to programming and supporting an online database system that supported over 100 users in managing thousands of patients that have been cared for the by the Intensive Care Service at Texas Children’s Hospital. During his Informatics training, Curt received an informatics training grant from the National Library of Medicine, and a 3-year K22 transitional grant, also from the National Library of Medicine.
Curt still practices pediatric intensive care at Texas Children’s Hospital. Outside of his clinical duties, he is currently engaged in quality improvement activities within his academic section, as well as with the hospital, through its Center for Clinical Effectiveness. He has two primary active areas of interest: clinical decision support, and using electrocardiogram (ECG) waveform analysis to further improve cardiac arrest prediction in the pediatric ICU. His driving vision is to create and implement tools that will be used by clinicians in real world settings to prevent children from experiencing preventable harm.