In the spring of 2006, David Mulherin was about to graduate from college with a degree in electrical engineering and already had a job lined up when his fraternity visited St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
The trip changed his life.
“After that, I just wanted to get into health care,” Mulherin recalled. “Clinical pharmacology does a lot of problem-solving, which is a lot like engineering … So, after completing my engineering degree, I went to pharmacy school.”
Nineteen years later, Mulherin is a clinical informatics pharmacist with a PharmD after his name, a lead application analyst for Vanderbilt HealthIT, and most recently, the recipient of a Vanderbilt University Medical Center Credo Award.
The award recognizes VUMC faculty, staff and house staff who consistently demonstrate exceptional credo behaviors: making those they serve their highest priority, having a sense of ownership, conducting themselves professionally, respecting privacy and confidentiality, and communicating effectively, with commitment to their colleagues. Mulherin received the Credo Award at the Fall 2025 VUMC Leadership Forum.
Mulherin develops customized, clinical decision support solutions for high-risk, high-complexity medications in VUMC’s computerized provider order entry system — solutions that have helped improve patient care and safety.
When Epic replaced StarPanel as VUMC’s clinical software platform in 2017, it lacked an outpatient order for parenteral nutrition (PN), intravenous nutrition used for patients without adequate function of their gastrointestinal tract.
“This was a substantial patient safety gap for our team, given the high volume of patients with intestinal failure who are managed by our team and rely on PN at home,” Dawn Adams, MD, MS, medical director of the Center for Human Nutrition, wrote in her nomination letter.
Mulherin “utilized other tools in Epic to create a new functionality where none had existed,” Adams wrote. “His work in HealthIT has positively impacted the safety of countless patients within the VUMC system and beyond.”
Mulherin also built Clinical Decision Support in Epic, which guides clinicians in dosing heparin and other anticoagulant (blood-thinning) drugs to prevent blood clots in patients with chronic kidney disease and other serious conditions.
The dosage is exceedingly crucial, as too much heparin will risk bleeding, and too little, thrombosis. Epic’s practice advisories guide clinicians in the frequent monitoring of patient kidney function and other relevant lab tests. Results are sent to the clinical pharmacists who adjust dosage accordingly.
“David is a part of the heparin workgroup, and he singlehandedly developed the new eStar (Epic) build for the adult, nurse-managed heparin protocol,” wrote Colleen Fortier, MSN, RN, nurse manager of VUMC’s 5 South Cardiology Stepdown Unit, in her nomination letter. “This was a huge interdisciplinary project.”
“All these alerts have made the administration of anticoagulants safer!” added Colleen Morton, MBBCH, MS, medical director for Anticoagulation Stewardship at VUMC.
In response to the Credo Award recognition, Mulherin said, “I’m completely honored and humbled. I’m just doing my job.”
The heparin protocols get a lot of attention, he said, but “everybody on my team (makes contributions) that are just as important in keeping the pharmacy operating and getting medications out to patients.”
Mulherin earned his pharmacy degree from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis and completed residencies in pharmacy practice and pharmacy informatics at Regional Medical Center in Memphis and the University of Michigan, respectively.
He taught health care informatics at the Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy before joining VUMC in 2014.
“I like the challenge of problem-solving,” said Mulherin, the once aspiring engineer. “At the end of the day, it’s knowing that what I’m doing … makes it easier for the front-line people to be able to do their jobs safely.”
His wife, Diana Mulherin, PharmD, is a board-certified nutrition support and critical care pharmacist in the Center for Human Nutrition. She is also a fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine and the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.
View David Mulherin’s video from the recent Leadership Forum.
If you are a VUMC employee, you can nominate a colleague for an Elevate Credo Award, C. Wright Pinson Leader Award, or Team Award. Visit the Elevate website to fill out a nomination form. Employees demonstrate credo behaviors when: they make those they serve the highest priority; respect privacy and confidentiality; communicate effectively; conduct themselves professionally; have a sense of ownership; and are committed to their colleagues. Elevate award nominations are accepted year-round. If a nomination is received after the cutoff for an award selection period, the nomination will be considered for the next period. VUMC VOICE will post stories on each of the award winners in the weeks following their announcement.
