Rate My Professor Ellen Wang

Ellen Wang, MD, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatric Anesthesiology in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She also serves as Clinical Professor of Clinical Informatics and Medical Director of Clinical Informatics for Perioperative Services at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford since 2012. In this role, she leads EHR enhancement and optimization projects that support surgical, nursing, pediatric, and obstetric anesthesia workflows. Additionally, Wang is Co-Director of the Stanford Chariot Program, where she combines clinical care, process improvement, data analytics, and research with virtual and augmented reality technologies to advance standards in patient care, particularly for pediatric procedures.

Wang received her BA in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MD from the University of California, San Francisco in 2003. She completed an internship at Alameda Health System Highland Hospital in 2004, anesthesia residency at UCLA in 2007, and pediatric anesthesiology fellowship at Children’s Hospital Boston in 2008, remaining on faculty there from 2008 to 2011 before joining Stanford. She holds board certifications from the American Board of Anesthesiology in Anesthesia (2008), Pediatric Anesthesia (2013), and from the American Board of Preventive Medicine in Clinical Informatics (2017). Her research specializations include pediatric anesthesiology, regional anesthesia, pre-anesthesia clinic operations, clinical informatics, and immersive technologies. Key publications include "Sound and Third-Person Perspective in Virtual Reality Improves Awe: A Prospective Study of Hospitalized Children and Caregivers" (Games for Health Journal, 2026, with He et al.), "Transnasal humidified rapid-insufflation ventilatory exchange (THRIVE) use in a pediatric population: A prospective, randomized controlled trial" (Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, 2026, with Wang et al.), "A technology acceptance model to predict anesthesiologists' clinical adoption of virtual reality" (Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, 2024), and "Virtual reality for pediatric periprocedural care" (Current Opinion in Anaesthesiology, 2021). Through these contributions, Wang impacts pediatric perioperative medicine by promoting innovative, technology-enhanced approaches to reduce anxiety, improve analgesia, and enhance cooperation during procedures.