Siraj Anwar completed his Master’s degree in Health Informatics at UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) in 2006. While a student at UTHealth he enjoyed his classes that covered workflow analysis, cognitive engineering and database and project management. Prior to his Master’s degree, Anwar completed his medical degree at the University of Mysore (India) in 2001, and practiced primary care in India before coming to the United States. Anwar’s position as a primary care physician helped him to understand some of the most common issues in healthcare, which led him to his current position today. He also received his certification in January 2010 as a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS).
Anwar currently works as the Manager, Clinical Solutions, over Clinical Decision Support (CDS) at Memorial Hermann. Anwar joined Memorial Hermann in April 2006. During his time at Memorial Hermann, Anwar has been a key leader in creating improvements in patient safety, quality and operational excellence using clinical decision support tools. Anwar advanced quickly from a role as a clinical application analyst to becoming the clinical informaticist for CDS. He has facilitated clinical workflow analysis with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, case managers and quality and performance improvement staff across the organization.
Anwar was nominated for System Services “Employee of the Year” in 2010, and was a member of the CDS Oversight Committee team that received the Gold Circle “Breakthrough of the Year” in Quality Award in 2010. He developed the methodologies and algorithms to determine the number of “Good Catches” from CDS interventions, medical errors that were prevented before reaching a patient and potentially causing an adverse event.
At Anwar’s current position, he looks forward to the challenge of solving clinical IT issues with the help of clinical decision support. Another aspect of his job that he enjoys is studying workflows, interacting with clinical stakeholders and analyzing data and discovering trends.
Anwar is also an adjunct faculty member at UTHealth SBMI. He has published journal articles in the Journal of Healthcare Information Management and the International Journal of Medical Informatics, and was a Section Editor of the 2010 best-selling book from HIMSS, “Improving Medication Use and Outcomes with Clinical Decision Support: A Step-by-Step Guide.” He has lectured and presented with the Scottsdale Institute, HIMSS and at the Cerner Health Conference.