On Nov. 2, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will switch to a new computer system, called eStar, which will support the health system’s electronic health records, workflows for inpatient and outpatient care delivery, test ordering, billing and other hospital and clinic operations.

Daniel Fabbri, Ph.D., assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and Computer Science, has been awarded a $1.7 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to create an automated clinical documentation system for use in battlefield ambulances and helicopters.

EpicLeap, a project that will transform patient care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) through new technology and processes, started in 2015 with a notification from a technology vendor. A few of the key pieces of software VUMC uses to currently provide care were no longer going to be supported by the vendor. Vanderbilt’s HealthIT team was then faced with a crucial decision — they could provide support for the software bundle themselves, upgrade to the vendor’s suggested replacements, or consider a totally different solution altogether.

Vanderbilt investigators have developed hospital readmission models that may help prevent payment penalties to hospitals when patients are readmitted too soon after discharge.

Vanderbilt investigators developed a computerized natural language processing algorithm to extract cancer stages from electronic medical records.

To most effectively use electronic health records for research, investigators should query multiple components of the record to identify patients with specific diseases.

Vanderbilt University researchers have received two major federal grants — totaling $7.6 million over four years — to support groundbreaking research aimed at making genetic information a routine part of patients’ electronic medical records.