electronic health records (EHRs)

February 11, 2021

Data mart speeds recruitment for COVID research

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.

By Paul Govern
February 11, 2021

Grant supports speedy sorting of health records by phenotype

Wei-Qi Wei, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and scientific director of the Precision Phenotyping Core at the Center for Precision Medicine, has been awarded a four-year, $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (grant GM139891) to continue

By Paul Govern
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February 11, 2021

Study will delve into EHR for signs of suicidality

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.

By Paul Govern
January 18, 2021

VUMC achieves EMRAM Stage 6 certification from HIMSS

VUMC has once again achieved Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 6 certification from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

By VUMC News and Communications
January 7, 2021

Building a cohort, the easy way

An automated system using keyword searches can help identify candidates for clinical trials on adverse drug reactions.

By Paul Govern
January 7, 2021

Functional seizures associated with stroke, psychiatric disorders in electronic health records study

In a large-scale study of electronic health records, Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators have determined the prevalence of functional seizures and characterized comorbidities associated with them.

By Leigh MacMillan
December 17, 2020

COVID-associated delays for elective services studied

This spring in the U.S., there were widespread delays in elective health care procedures and screenings. Hospitals, in observance of federal guidelines, were, for a time, conserving beds and protective equipment in preparation for a surge in COVID-19 admissions. And, perhaps on a more prolonged basis, patients in many areas of the country stayed away due to anxiety over catching COVID-19 from other patients or their health care team.
By Paul Govern
December 3, 2020

Team tracks sources of false positives in urine drug screens

False positives on urine drug screens are common and are frequently due to cross-reactivity of these tests to medications. Last year, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers Jacob Hughey, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics, and Jennifer Colby, PhD, at that time assistant professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, devised, tested and published a method to systematically identify medications that interfere with screenings for drugs of abuse.
By Paul Govern
November 17, 2020

A cohort for type 2 diabetes studies

A study group of more than 600,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, identified from electronic medical records in the PCORnet national research network, could be valuable for assessing the safety of type 2 diabetes drugs.
By Leigh MacMillan
November 4, 2020

Study tracks physician use of electronic health records

According to a new large-scale descriptive study in the journal Pediatrics, for each outpatient encounter, pediatricians on average spend 16 minutes using the electronic health record (EHR).
By Paul Govern
October 29, 2020

New tool rapidly identifies health records for studies

Electronic health records (EHR) are increasingly a resource for biomedical discovery, and automated searches for records that reflect a phenotype of interest, typically a disease, are a common starting point.
By Paul Govern
October 15, 2020

Initiative seeks to extract cancer phenotypes from electronic health records

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has funded the development of interactive visual tools that will allow researchers to extract cancer phenotypes from electronic medical records.
By Tom Wilemon
October 8, 2020

VUMC teams working to adopt new federal EHR rules

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is working toward a Nov. 1 date to comply with key parts of new federal rules issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), as part of the 21st Century Cures Act.
By Madison Agee