Christianne Roumie, MD, MPH, research health scientist at VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System and professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has been named the director of a new Health Systems Research Center of Innovation (COIN) for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The COIN program supports research innovations and partnerships to ensure that research has the greatest possible impact on Veterans Health Administration policies, health care practices and health outcomes for veterans.
The new VETerans’ Wellbeing Through Innovation Systems Science and Experience in Learning Health Systems (VETWISE-LHS) has two goals: preventing the onset of early-stage disease and improving the care of complex chronic or acute illness through research, discovery and practice, and developing innovative methods to enhance longitudinal data collection and transform data into knowledge to improve veteran health. The center will be at VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System (TVHS) in Nashville.
“The VETWISE-LHS Center of Innovation will support key projects to directly improve health care and health outcomes for our veterans,” Roumie said. “We are excited about what this will mean for the men and women who have served our country who will benefit from advances in care driven by the innovative thinking and action of the VETWISE-LHS team. We will use a learning health system framework to address several key Office of Research and Development Strategic priorities including expansion of clinical trials, increasing the real-world impact of VA research and putting VA data to work for veterans.”
A learning health system (LHS) is a health system in which knowledge generation processes are embedded in daily practice. LHS scientists collaborate with health system leaders and key partners to produce novel insights and evidence that can be rapidly implemented to improve the health outcomes of individuals and populations, as well as improve health system performance.
Joining Roumie in leading VETWISE-LHS are associate directors Michael Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, professor of Biomedical Informatics, Medicine and Biostatistics, and Lucy Spalluto, MD, MPH, professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences. The center includes 36 core and affiliate TVHS scientists.
The VETWISE-LHS has four core focuses:
- The Biomedical Informatics and Data Science to Inform LHS Core, led by Matheny, will support scientists in the design, management and execution of research. This core will advance biomedical informatics, biostatistics and data science supporting information synthesis and interpretation, diagnostic evaluation, clinical workflow and care delivery.
- The Veteran Engagement and Implementation Core, led by Spalluto, will ensure that clinicians, veterans, administrators and community members are engaged, and that effective, equitable and sustainable interventions are delivered to patients.
- The Patient Outcomes and Health Policy Core, led by Roumie, will help veterans make informed decisions about their health and generate evidence about which strategies are safe, effective and of high value. This core will also engage with policy shareholders and service lines to influence policies that benefit all veterans.
- The Administrative and Training Core will engage junior faculty in preparing and executing career awards. Trainees will implement the LHS competencies, shareholder engagement, health communication, systems science and implementation research.
The Nashville VA Medical Center is one of 20 COINs across the United States designated to support collaborative, multisite research, VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative, and VA operations partner-focused initiatives. Nashville is one of three new COIN sites approved by VA Health Systems Research for funding in fiscal year 2025.
This center will also work collaboratively with the Realizing Accelerated Progress, Investigation, Implementation, and Dissemination in Learning Health Systems (RAPID-LHS) center at VUMC which is supported by a $5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
The RAPID-LHS center at VUMC is led by Roumie, Peter Embí, MD, MS, and Russell Rothman, MD, MPP. It focuses on training scientists and supporting research to minimize gaps between the generation of clinical evidence, implementation of proven interventions and development of informed public health policy. The VA is a partner organization to RAPID-LHS.
