Department of Biomedical Informatics Archives
VUMC forms new Center for Improving the Public’s Health Using Informatics (CIPHI)
Jun. 20, 2019—Vanderbilt University Medical Center is forming a new Center for Improving the Public’s Health Using Informatics (CIPHI, pronounced “Sci Fi”) to be co-directed by Michael Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, and Melissa McPheeters, PhD, MPH.
Report seeks to streamline EHR de-identification
Apr. 4, 2019—Over the past few decades the electronic health record (EHR) has become an object of intensive study, opening new ground in biomedical research. Natural language sections of the EHR, such as physician’s notes and health team messages, are a rich vein for research, but patient privacy considerations entail first scrubbing patient identifiers from these notes and messages. Historically, this has been accomplished through large, complex software systems that are expensive to develop and maintain.
Treatment resistance of mental disorders studied
Mar. 28, 2019—With the aid of a four-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will apply new techniques to investigate treatment resistance of two devastating mental disorders — major depressive disorder, which befalls 15 percent of people at some point in their lives, and schizophrenia, which affects approximately 1 percent.
Skin diseases study uses crowdsourcing to gather data
Feb. 21, 2019—In 1906, English statistician Francis Galton happened to visit a livestock fair where fairgoers were invited to guess the dressed weight of an ox scheduled for imminent slaughter. Some 800 attendees took part and afterwards Galton got hold of the contest data.
Major initiative launched to advance the application of AI to health care
Feb. 13, 2019—IBM Watson Health has announced plans to make a 10-year, $50 million investment in joint research collaborations with Brigham and Women’s Hospital — the teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School — and Vanderbilt University Medical Center to advance the science of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application to major public health issues.
Study explores genetic risk for suicide attempt
Jan. 31, 2019—Using data from the UK Biobank and Vanderbilt’s BioVU, a new study in the journal Molecular Psychiatry finds that approximately 4 percent of suicide attempt risk is captured by genotype data.
Study finds patient messages help predict medication adherence
Jan. 31, 2019—Around two-thirds of patients treated for breast cancer will have had hormone-sensitive tumors and, after their initial treatment, will be advised to undergo hormone therapy for five to 10 years to prevent recurrence.
Signals from the “conveyor belt”
Jan. 17, 2019—Vanderbilt researchers propose that cellular signaling pathways are amplified by a “conveyor belt” mechanism that exchanges active and inactive enzymes.
Study tracks repercussions from reduced pre-op testing
Jan. 17, 2019—When clinical teams at Vanderbilt University Medical Center dramatically reduced several types of preoperative testing for elective surgery patients, there were no repercussions for these patients in terms of case cancellation rates, average length of stay in the hospital or rates of readmission to VUMC.
Grant to help address complexity of cancer care
Jan. 10, 2019—Jeremy Warner, MD, MS, associate professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop software that will help clinicians keep up with the increasing complexity of cancer care.
Analyzing single-cell landscapes
Nov. 29, 2018—Vanderbilt researchers have developed a new tool for quantifying data from single-cell studies.
One year after Go Live, focus remains on advancing eStar
Nov. 15, 2018—This month marks the one-year anniversary of VUMC’s transition to eStar, and, as expected, there have been challenges and successes along the way.
