Brian Hazlehurst, PhD

Brian Hazlehurst, PhD, is a cognitive anthropologist interested in the cognitive, social, cultural and technological properties of health and healthcare. His investigations include the study of care provider work practices and the needs of people with chronic illnesses, as well as design and development of appropriate information-processing tools for these populations.

Recently, Dr. Hazlehurst has focused on informatics methods that enable access to clinical details about patients and their care, through use of natural language processing technologies. Much of the clinical data necessary for answering research questions is found in the text notes clinicians write when caring for patients. Dr. Hazlehurst’s team has successfully used Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to unlock this clinical data from electronic medical records (EMRs).

Dr. Hazlehurst has served as principal and co-investigator on numerous studies funded by NIH, AHRQ, NLM, FDA, and CDC, using electronic health records to assess a wide range of health topics including: the prevalence and effectiveness of smoking cessation advice and lifestyle counseling, and the prevalence of opioid-related overdoses and vaccine-related adverse events.  His research has also included ethnographic studies of the use of technologies and social practices to ensure safe health care delivery.

Dr. Hazlehurst joined CHR as a Medical Informatics Investigator in the summer of 2001. Previously, he was chief scientist and director of research and informatics at WebMD, an Internet health care company. At WebMD, he led the R&D effort focused on using the Internet to empower chronically ill people. His work included the design and development of information retrieval and knowledge-based systems, for which he received three U.S. patents. Dr. Hazlehurst received his PhD in cognitive science and anthropology from University of California, San Diego, in 1994.

Selected Publications

• Carrell DS, Gruber S, Floyd JS, Bann MA, Cushing-Haugen KL, Johnson RL, Graham V, Cronkite DJ, Hazlehurst BL, Felcher AH, Bejan CA, Kennedy A, Shinde MU, Karami S, Ma Y, Stojanovic D, Zhao Y, Ball R, Nelson JC. Improving Methods of Identifying Anaphylaxis for Medical Product Safety Surveillance Using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Am J Epidemiol. 2023 Feb 1;192(2):283-295. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwac182. PMID: 36331289; PMCID: PMC9896464.
• Floyd JS, Bann MA, Felcher AH, Sapp D, Nguyen MD, Ajao A, Ball R, Carrell DS, Nelson JC, Hazlehurst B. Validation of Acute Pancreatitis Among Adults in an Integrated Healthcare System. Epidemiology. 2023 Jan 1;34(1):33-37. doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000001541. Epub 2022 Aug 25. PMID: 36007092.
• Green CA, Hazlehurst B. Developing public health tools for combating the opioid epidemic. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2019 Aug;28(8):1125-1126. doi: 10.1002/pds.4871. PMID: 31373423.
• Hazlehurst B, Green CA, Perrin NA, Brandes J, Carrell DS, Baer A, DeVeaugh- Geiss A, Coplan PM. Using natural language processing of clinical text to enhance identification of opioid-related overdoses in electronic health records data. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2019 Aug;28(8):1143-1151. doi: 10.1002/pds.4810. Epub 2019 Jun 19. PMID: 31218780; PMCID: PMC6772185.
• Green CA, Perrin NA, Hazlehurst B, Janoff SL, DeVeaugh-Geiss A, Carrell DS, Grijalva CG, Liang C, Enger CL, Coplan PM. Identifying and classifying opioid- related overdoses: A validation study. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2019 Aug;28(8):1127-1137. doi: 10.1002/pds.4772. Epub 2019 Apr 24. PMID: 31020755; PMCID: PMC6767606.
• Bailey SR, Stevens VJ, Fortmann SP, Kurtz SE, McBurnie MA, Priest E, Puro J, Solberg LI, Schweitzer R, Masica AL, Hazlehurst B. Long-Term Outcomes From Repeated Smoking Cessation Assistance in Routine Primary Care. Am J Health Promot. 2018 Sep;32(7):1582-1590. doi: 10.1177/0890117118761886. Epub 2018 Mar 13. PMID: 29534598; PMCID: PMC6342013.
• Hazlehurst B. When I say … distributed cognition. Med Educ. 2015 Aug;49(8):755-6. doi: 10.1111/medu.12672. PMID: 26152486.
• Hazlehurst BL, Kurtz SE, Masica A, Stevens VJ, McBurnie MA, Puro JE, Vijayadeva V, Au DH, Brannon ED, Sittig DF. CER Hub: An informatics platform for conducting comparative effectiveness research using multi-institutional, heterogeneous, electronic clinical data. Int J Med Inform. 2015 Oct;84(10):763-73. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2015.06.002. Epub 2015 Jun 10. PMID: 26138036.
• Hazlehurst BL, Lawrence JM, Donahoo WT, Sherwood NE, Kurtz SE, Xu S, Steiner JF. Automating assessment of lifestyle counseling in electronic health records. Am J Prev Med. 2014 May;46(5):457-64. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2014.01.001. PMID: 24745635; PMCID: PMC4511267.
• Sittig DF, Hazlehurst BL. Informatics grand challenges in multi- institutional comparative effectiveness research. J Comp Eff Res. 2012 Sep;1(5):373-6. doi: 10.2217/cer.12.48. PMID: 24236411.
• Hazlehurst B, Naleway A, Mullooly J. Detecting possible vaccine adverse events in clinical notes of the electronic medical record. 2009 Mar 23;27(14):2077-83. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2009.01.105. Epub 2009 Jan 31. PMID: 19428833.
• Hazlehurst B, Gorman PN, McMullen CK. Distributed cognition: an alternative model of cognition for medical informatics. Int J Med Inform. 2008 Apr;77(4):226-34. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2007.04.008. Epub 2007 Jun 6. PMID: 17556014.
• Hazlehurst B, McMullen CK, Gorman PN. Distributed cognition in the heart room: how situation awareness arises from coordinated communications during cardiac surgery. J Biomed Inform. 2007 Oct;40(5):539-51. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2007.02.001. Epub 2007 Feb 8. PMID: 17368112.
• Hazlehurst B, McMullen C. Orienting frames and private routines: the role of cultural process in critical care safety. Int J Med Inform. 2007 Jun;76 Suppl 1:S129-35. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2006.06.005. Epub 2006 Jul 27. PMID: 16875873.
• Hazlehurst B, Sittig DF, Stevens VJ, Smith KS, Hollis JF, Vogt TM, Winickoff JP, Glasgow R, Palen TE, Rigotti NA. Natural language processing in the electronic medical record: assessing clinician adherence to tobacco treatment guidelines. Am J Prev Med. 2005 Dec;29(5):434-9. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2005.08.007. PMID: 16376707.
• Hazlehurst B, Frost HR, Sittig DF, Stevens VJ. MediClass: A system for detecting and classifying encounter-based clinical events in any electronic medical record. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2005 Sep-Oct;12(5):517-29. doi: 10.1197/jamia.M1771. Epub 2005 May 19. PMID: 15905485; PMCID: PMC1205600.
• Hazlehurst B, McMullen C, Gorman P, Sittig D. How the ICU follows orders: care delivery as a complex activity system. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2003;2003:284-8. PMID: 14728179; PMCID: PMC1480222.