Certain drug exposures correlate with reduced COVID severity: study

Analyzing electronic health records (EHR) of 9,748 patients diagnosed with COVID-19, Cosmin Bejan, PhD, Elizabeth Phillips, MD, and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center asked whether COVID disease severity correlated with any drugs that happened to be taken by these patients in the months leading up to their diagnosis.

Drug allergy labels in medical records power searches for gene-drug associations

Award recognizes hands-on contributions to health IT at VUMC

Chetan Aher, MD, assistant professor of Surgery, and Wael Alrifai, MD, assistant professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics, are the inaugural winners of the Physician Builder Award, sponsored by the Vanderbilt Clinical Informatics Center (VCLIC). They received trophies made from Lego building blocks and gift certificates.

Rosenbloom appointed to National Library of Medicine’s Biomedical Informatics, Library and Data Sciences Review Committee

Trent Rosenbloom, MD, MPH, professor and vice chair of Faculty Affairs in the Department of Biomedical Informatics, has been appointed to the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Biomedical Informatics, Library and Data Sciences (BILDS) Review Committee.

Clinical informatics program named HIMSS Approved Education Partner

Vanderbilt’s Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics program (MSACI) was recently named an Approved Education Partner (AEP) by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Vanderbilt’s Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) and the School of Nursing also received HIMSS AEP approval.

Strength in numbers

Voluntary data sharing across a region’s health systems and ambulatory care practices is important for measuring and improving health care quality and safety, Vanderbilt researchers report.