Travis Osterman, DO, MS, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Jonathan Wanderer, MD, MPhil, professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Informatics, have been named associate chief medical information officers in HealthIT at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
These roles fall under chief medical information officer Dara Mize, MD, MS. As part of their new duties, Osterman and Wanderer will provide mentoring and guidance to HealthIT clinical directors in their operational IT efforts.
“We are fortunate to have the years of experience and expertise Drs. Osterman and Wanderer bring to their work,” Mize said. “They have a proven record of developing IT solutions for the benefit of our patients and the VUMC community. These new roles will expand their influence on IT initiatives at VUMC.”
Osterman came to VUMC in 2013 as a clinical fellow in hematology and oncology. Prior to taking this new role, he was senior clinical director in HealthIT.
“I am excited to take on this role to serve as one of the connections between HealthIT and our clinical colleagues,” Osterman said. “VUMC has a great culture of bringing technological innovations into clinical practice. I hope to continue that long tradition.”
Osterman’s responsibilities will expand to include planning and supporting the VUMC cloud strategy to ensure maximum leverage of the Medical Center’s new cloud infrastructure. He will continue serving as the director of Cancer Clinical Informatics and will continue to lead the clinical genomics workstream and coordinating HealthIT activities for health information management. As part of his existing role of associate vice president of Research Informatics, he will continue to lead strategic research informatics initiatives including bringing together operational and research data assets and platforms to decrease barriers for using clinical data to support research and operations.
There are several projects focusing on improving researchers’ access to clinical data Osterman hopes to tackle first in his new role. “I am excited to leverage this new opportunity to promote discovery at VUMC,” he said.
Wanderer has worked for VUMC clinical informatics since he joined the Medical Center 10 years ago as an instructor in Anesthesiology. Prior to his new role, Wanderer was senior clinical director in HealthIT.
“I am thrilled to be able to serve this new position for VUMC,” Wanderer said. “I am pleased to continue work on improving the care we deliver through informatics, streamlining the user experience for clinicians, and facilitating the excellent research that we do. It is a privilege to be able to contribute in this way, and I am deeply enthusiastic about the opportunity.”
Wanderer’s new responsibilities will expand his leadership to include acute care in the inpatient and perioperative settings and the associated revenue cycle activities. Years of experience in innovation and leadership in inpatient documentation and perioperative clinical care and research will build on this new role. While taking on a more active role in acute care settings, Wanderer will continue to lead the VUMC Physician Builder Program, which is the largest program of its kind, per capita, in the world. He will also maintain his leadership roles in the VUMC Clinical Informatics Fellowship and Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics.
Wanderer said he is excited to work with the clinical director team to strengthen the relationships with the clinical departments across the enterprise and within HealthIT.
“We are fortunate to have the years of experience and expertise Drs. Osterman and Wanderer bring to their work,” Mize said. “They have a proven record of developing IT solutions for the benefit of our patients and the VUMC community. These new roles will expand their influence on IT initiatives at VUMC.”