Clinical Informatics Fellowship Faculty

Lisa Masson, MD, MBA, is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UCLA, University of Southern California and University of Michigan. She enjoyed two years of a general surgery residency before following her passion in primary care. In 2000, 15 years into a busy practice, her office went live on the electronic health record (EHR). Masson advocated for physicians in the use of the EHR and soon was leading the charge as a champion, first locally then regionally. Masson moved into a more active role in informatics. She promotes improved communication and transparency and believes medicine can have an efficient system that embraces quality and makes it easier for the physicians to do the right thing. Writing has been a persistent habit throughout her life—including a second degree from MIT in humanities, a community columnist role for a decade in Modesto, California, and an opportunity to write a patient blog for Sutter Health. Since 2011, Masson has returned to her native Los Angeles as a clinical informaticist at Cedars-Sinai. 

Mike Directo, MD, MBA is the medical director of Clinical Transformation within the Cedars-Sinai Health System. In his role, Dr. Directo leads collaborative efforts focused on clinical efficiency and appropriateness of care and provides clinical perspectives to enhance healthcare value. Board-certified in clinical informatics, he also maintains a focus on leveraging technology to help drive greater efficiencies and support change management.

Directo is board-certified in internal medicine and continues to practice in Los Angeles, California. He holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Division of Informatics, and oversees fellows and other trainees rotating through Clinical Transformation.

Yaron Elad, MD, is associate medical director, clinical informatics for the Cedars-Sinai Health System. He is a practicing cardiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Care Foundation, where he serves as chief of the Division of Cardiology for Cedars-Sinai. He is a member of the Smidt Heart Institute, where he serves as vice clinical chief. Elad has served on multiple committees at Cedars-Sinai, including the Medical Executive Committee and Cardiology Performance Improvement Committee. He has published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American College of Cardiology, among others. His current interests including clinical decision support, data analytics and cardiovascular imaging and informatics. Elad is board certified in internal medicine, cardiology, nuclear cardiology and clinical informatics.

Lalima Hoq, MD, is an internal medicine specialist in Los Angeles. She graduated from medical school in 1997 and has more than 20 years of diverse experience, especially in internal medicine. Hoq affiliates with Cedars-Sinai and collaborates with other doctors and specialists in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Care Foundation group.

Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Alan Tomines, MD, concurrently served as director of the Child Health and Disability Prevention program, medical director for the Health Care Program for Children in Foster Care and director of the Child Welfare Public Health Nursing Program for the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health. He previously served as the director of Clinical and Public Health Informatics for the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health and as the assistant chief, medical informatics for the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services. Tomines is board certified in both pediatrics and clinical informatics. He maintains a clinical appointment as associate professor in the Division of General Pediatrics at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a joint faculty appointment in pediatrics and health policy and management at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. His areas of interest include child health information systems, health information exchange, human-computer interaction and usability and data visualization.

Asha Kalichira, PharmD, MS, is an application analyst on the pharmacy informatics team at Cedars-Sinai. She has been involved in the rollout of the outpatient morphine equivalence calculator, penicillin-allergy evaluation tools, as well as specialty pharmacy workflows. Kalichira's professional interests include exploring applications of data analytics to optimize patient outcomes, clinical decision support and mobile health technology. She has received both her doctor of pharmacy and master of science in health informatics degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After graduating, she went on to complete a PGY-1 in pharmacy practice and PGY-2 in pharmacy informatics at Aurora Health Care. Kalichira has served as a member of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists' Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology Advisory Group for several years.