Fifteen years after it was launched, REDCap, Vanderbilt University’s research data management tool, has reached 1 million users throughout the world.

Scarcely a year after its national launch, the “All of Us” research program, which aims to accelerate the prevention and treatment of disease, has enrolled more than 230,000 research participants — more than a fifth of its recruitment goal of 1 million people. All

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.

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.

Some biomedical researchers may be unsure about routine electronic health record (EHR) data and how useful it ultimately may prove for drawing meaningful, actionable associations that warrant changes to clinical practice and lead to improved clinical outcomes.

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.

Michael Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics and Medicine, is one of 18 fellows recently elected to the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI).