Department of Biomedical Informatics Archive — Page 3 of 25

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August 25, 2025

Clinicians, patients cheer DAX, the AI ‘ear’ in Vanderbilt Health exam rooms

The program, called DAX Copilot, relieves clinicians from having to enter data into the electronic health record during patient visits and enables them to focus more fully on the patient.

April 29, 2025

Peter Embí, Department of Biomedical Informatics chair, to step down

DBMI is one of the nation’s largest departments of its kind in academic medicine and consists of more than 130 faculty who focus on different aspects of biomedical informatics.

Jill Simmons, MD, and John Shelley found that adding a genetic measure of height to the evaluation of children with short stature might improve diagnosis and clinical outcomes. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
April 25, 2025

Polygenic score for height could improve diagnosis for children with short stature: study

Even after comprehensive testing, about 30% of children with short stature — height below the third percentile on a growth chart — do not have a definitive diagnosis, leading to extended surveillance, testing and anxiety.

March 17, 2025

Where are all the Alzheimer’s drugs?

A new study will use innovative methods developed at VUMC to look for drugs already approved for other uses that could potentially be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s.

March 5, 2025

Team finds a better way to identify newborns at risk for opioid withdrawal

By 2017, on the back of the opioid crisis, the rate of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome in the U.S. was estimated to have reached 7.3 per 1000 deliveries. Meanwhile, many newborns exposed to opioids in utero never develop the syndrome and must undergo needless monitoring in the hospital after birth.

February 17, 2025

Weight-loss surgery associated with reduced dementia

An observational study found that bariatric surgery was associated with 63% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.