Leaders with Vanderbilt Health want to increase enrollment in My Health at Vanderbilt (MHAV), the online portal that offers VUMC’s patients such advantages as interacting with their electronic medical records, communicating securely with members of their healthcare team and paying medical bills electronically.

A smartphone application called mUzima, developed for healthcare workers by Vanderbilt’s Martin Were, MD, MS, and his team, is catching on in eastern Africa.

On Nov. 2, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will switch to a new computer system, called eStar, which will support the health system’s electronic health records, workflows for inpatient and outpatient care delivery, test ordering, billing and other hospital and clinic operations.

Daniel Fabbri, Ph.D., assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and Computer Science, has been awarded a $1.7 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to create an automated clinical documentation system for use in battlefield ambulances and helicopters.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been approved for a $1 million funding award by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study more efficient and feasible ways to validate electronic health records (EHR) and incorporate this information into medical studies.

EpicLeap, a project that will transform patient care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) through new technology and processes, started in 2015 with a notification from a technology vendor. A few of the key pieces of software VUMC uses to currently provide care were no longer going to be supported by the vendor. Vanderbilt’s HealthIT team was then faced with a crucial decision — they could provide support for the software bundle themselves, upgrade to the vendor’s suggested replacements, or consider a totally different solution altogether.

Vanderbilt investigators have developed hospital readmission models that may help prevent payment penalties to hospitals when patients are readmitted too soon after discharge.