Tech & Health

New investments in clinical programs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are increasingly contingent upon studies to validate claims of benefit and the potential for scalability and spread.

A machine learning algorithm that predicts suicide attempt recently underwent a prospective trial at the institution where it was developed, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Kevin Johnson, MD, MS, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI), professor of Pediatrics and Informatician-in-Chief at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will depart the organization on Nov. 1, to join the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and Perelman School of Medicine. He will continue to serve as chair of DBMI as a national search is conducted to identify his successor.

Each year at VUMC, REDCap Day brings together local users from VUMC, Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College for a morning of brief presentations on innovative use cases and new and upcoming features.

The arrival last March of the COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee presented challenges for the clinical research enterprise at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prompt recruitment of patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19 into clinical trials was, and remains, a public health imperative with top-level backing from the federal government.

Retrieval of clearer, more complete information from the EHR could go a long way toward improving predictive models of who will next be at risk of suicide, thereby improving care for patients with suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Health informatics expert and educator Jessica Ancker, PhD, MPH, has joined the Department of Biomedical Informatics as vice chair for Educational Affairs. Ancker comes from Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, where she was an associate professor.