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Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality

About the Center for Diagnostic Excellence

In this section:

The Center's Goals

The Center’s long-range goals include catalyzing efforts to improve diagnostic performance by:

  • raising awareness, engaging partners, prioritizing problems, implementing solutions, and measuring the impact of new diagnostic strategies;
  • developing the science of diagnostic safety by creating novel methods, metrics, and tools to improve diagnosis;
  • and enhancing diagnostic research by building training capacity, organizing collaborative networks, and influencing funding policy.

 How we will accomplish this:

  • Raise Awareness: Educate patients, providers and leaders about diagnostic errors.

  • Prioritize Problem: Measure the frequency and burden of harms from misdiagnosis.

  • Implement Solutions: Leverage technology to achieve diagnostic excellence in practice.

  • Develop Methods: Create novel ways to measure burden, identify causes and test solutions.

  • Create Networks: Organize a hub for diagnostic researchers to collaborate and access experts.

  • Engage Partners: Convene multi-disciplinary teams to improve patient-centered diagnosis.

  • Identify Causes: Find sources of error and envision prevention and mitigation strategies.

  • Measure Impact: Measure effects on diagnostic accuracy, efficiency, value and satisfaction.

  • Build Capacity: Foster the next generation of academic leaders and researches in diagnosis.

  • Influence Policy: Advocate for appropriate performance metrics and diagnostic research funding.

About the Center

Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, and its Center for Diagnostic Excellence are uniquely positioned to solve this global challenge and lead change by providing the safest, most accurate, highest-value diagnostic care in the world.

Johns Hopkins is already a world leader in patient safety and medical research. The Armstrong Institute has advanced the science of patient safety, conducting numerous cutting-edge research and implementation studies that have impacted patients, providers and policy. The Center for Diagnostic Excellence will harness these tools to create groundbreaking approaches to tackle diagnostic error and move the needle on misdiagnosis-related harms.

The Armstrong Institute Center for Diagnostic Excellence was created by a $5 million gift from C. Michael Armstrong, former chairman of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins Medicine and retired chairman of Comcast, AT&T, Hughes Electronics and IBM World Trade Corporation. Armstrong also generously funded the Armstrong Institute in 2011.

About Our Team

Our core team has diverse clinical backgrounds combined with specialized expertise in diagnostic research methods, systems engineering, cognitive psychology, implementation science, patient-centered communication, education, informatics, biostatistics and health economics. Together, our teams will mesh diverse ideas and align them to combat diagnostic errors worldwide.

Administrative Core

Oversight, project management, organization, scheduling

  • David Newman-Toker, M.D. Ph.D., Center Director
  • Kathryn McDonald, Ph.D., Center Co-Director
  • Ayodele McClenney, J.D., Director Strategic Partnerships
  • Paco Castellon, MBA, MPH., Director of Research Operations
  • Yuxin “Daisy” Zhu, PhD, Biostatician
  • Krisztian Sebestyen, MS, Sr. Programmer Analyst
  • Vanessa Llewellyn, MBA, Program Manager
  • Kimberly Smith, MS, Administrative Specialist

Systems Core

Developing new methods, grants and research, resource for methods expertise to others psychology, evaluation and implementation science, decision support (theory), evidence synthesis

Value Core

Operational measurement (reports, graphical displays), decision support, modeling

Teams Core

Teamwork, education and training, culture/adaptive change, operations improvement

Education Core

Data Science Core  

Biostatistics Core  

Stroke Workgroup

Sepsis  Workgroup

Lung Cancer Workgroup