St. Luke’s University Health Network has earned the 2026 HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence, becoming the first and only health care organization in the world to receive the prestigious honor four times. The unprecedented achievement—following St. Luke’s awards in 2019, 2020 and 2023—establishes the Network as America’s leader in hospital digital innovation.
The Davies Award recognizes those health care organizations that do far more than merely adopt new technology. It recognizes those that use it in innovative, measurable and sustainable ways to make care safer, improve outcomes and create a better patient experience. No other health system has demonstrated that capability often and consistently enough to earn the award four times.
Presented by HIMSS, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the Davies Award is one of health care’s most respected honors. It showcases organizations whose thoughtful, globally innovative applications of information and technology redefine evidence-based best practices and produce significant improvements in clinical care.
“No other health care organization in the world has won four Davies Awards. That distinction makes clear what our patients experience every day: St. Luke’s is setting the national standard for using innovation to deliver safer, smarter and more effective care,” St. Luke’s Chief Information Officer Chad Brisendine said.
Added St. Luke’s Chief Quality Officer Donna Sabol: “Our competitive advantage is not technology alone. It is our ability to combine technology, data and clinical expertise to achieve measurable results for the people and communities we serve.”
St. Luke’s earned its fourth Davies Award for integrating predictive analytics and electronic health record clinical decision support into everyday care. The winning initiatives helped clinicians recognize deteriorating patients earlier, protect patients receiving a powerful antibiotic and standardize suicide-risk assessment and interventions across a multisite health care system. Together, the results show how St. Luke’s turns innovation into lives saved, harm prevented and better value.
St. Luke’s received the 2026 Davies Award for three projects that improved patient care:
- Identifying patients whose condition is getting worse: A digital tool helped care teams recognize warning signs sooner. This reduced emergency “code” events by 25.8%, cut unexpected transfers to intensive care after a rapid response by 31.9% and helped save an additional 55 lives over three years.
- Making a powerful antibiotic safer: A new way of monitoring vancomycin treatment reduced the relative risk of related kidney injury by nearly 60%. It is expected to prevent about 2,022 harmful drug-related events each year and avoid an estimated $16 million in annual costs.
- Improving suicide-risk screening and safety measures: St. Luke’s created a consistent approach to assessing suicide risk and matching patients with the appropriate level of monitoring and support across its hospitals. Use of the recommended safety measures increased from 50% to 73%, while an estimated $2.93 million in costs was avoided without reducing patient safety.
“Winning once demonstrates innovation. Becoming the first organization in the world to win four times demonstrates a culture of continuous innovation,” Brisendine said. “This achievement reflects years of collaboration, trust and discipline among our clinical, operational, informatics and IT teams. Most importantly, it reflects their shared commitment to turning technology and data into better care for every patient.”
For more information, go to HIMSS.
