David C. Classen is the CMIO at Pascal Metrics, a Patient Safety Organization, a professor of medicine at the University of Utah and a consultant in infectious diseases and clinical epidemiology at The University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee that developed the National Healthcare Quality Report, and he was also a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Patient Safety Data Standards and a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health Information Technology and Patient Safety. He was also a faculty member of the IHI/National Health Foundation Safer Patients Initiative in the United Kingdom. David is one of the developers of the "Trigger Tool Methodology" at IHI, used for the improved detection of adverse events which has been used by more than 1000 different healthcare organizations throughout the United States and Europe. He received his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and a Master's of Science in medical informatics from the University of Utah School of Medicine.