Dr. Najjar is vice president of clinical innovation for Johns Hopkins Health System and an assistant professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he bridges clinical practice, operational leadership and commercialization to scale innovation beyond pilots. He built systemwide patient safety, operational excellence and analytics structures, including the nation’s largest centralized clinical registry abstraction core. Dr. Najjar has partnered with engineering teams to introduce large language models into registry abstraction, using internally developed AI tools to accelerate abstraction and improve data quality. He helped spin out Safetower, a Johns Hopkins subsidiary that uses AI-enabled tools to strengthen harm-event reporting and response in frontline practice. He also led development of Hopkins Ambient Learning and Optimization, an ambient intelligence platform integrating video, audio and sensors to improve teamwork, reduce error and generate research-grade data streams. As a practicing colorectal surgeon focused on complex and robotic procedures, Dr. Najjar models adoption in clinical workflows while co-directing a physician-executive fellowship. He has also earned the “Frederic E. Eckhauser Award” for resident mentorship.
