Kenrick Cato, PhD, RN, is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and a Nurse Scientist for Pediatric Data and Analytics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Cato has a varied background. He worked as a database engineer and software engineer before serving as an infantryman—both enlisted and officer—in the United States Army. He has also worked as an oncology nurse and as an analyst in the information technology department, working on projects to improve patient safety using clinical decision support.
Dr. Cato is a clinical informatician whose program of research focuses on mining electronic patient data to support decision-making for clinicians, patients, and caregivers in a non-biased way. He is also involved in several national-level informatics organizations, including as a former board member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), a leader in the Nursing Informatics Working Group (NIWG) of AMIA, and a member of the American College of Medical Informatics.
