News

Methods relying on diagnostic codes to identify suicidal ideation and suicide attempt in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) at scale are suboptimal because suicide-related outcomes are heavily under-coded. We propose to improve the ascertainment of suicidal outcomes using natural language processing (NLP). We developed information retrieval methodologies to search over 200 million notes from the Vanderbilt EHR. Suicide query terms were extracted using word2vec. A weakly supervised approach was designed to label cases of suicidal outcomes.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) Department of Biomedical Informatics's (DBMI) monthly newsletter, DBMI Digest, is now available to view. Read the August 2022 DBMI Digest here. Each DBMI Digest features department & faculty announcements, awards & appointments, educational & HR updates, funding opportunities and more. Each issue also includes a profile of one of our faculty, staff, postdocs and students. 

You Chen, PhD, FAMIA, Assistant Professor in DBMI, published an article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences titled "Sleep Disturbance and Metabolic Dysfunction: The Role of Adipokines". 

An explosive increase in the quantity of genomic data being collected, used and shared is propelling current and ongoing research into privacy protections related to personal genetic information. A team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has reexamined the literature surrounding online threats and protections against genomic data leaks from both a legal and technical perspective.

New research from Vanderbilt investigators suggests that clinicians should take a deeper dive into distinguishing EGFR mutations when prescribing targeted therapies for non-small-cell lung cancers.

Pregnancy in patients with lung cancer is uncommon. There are limited safety data during pregnancy for ALK inhibitors — targeted therapies for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ALK gene rearrangements. 

Vanderbilt University’s Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics (MS-ACI) program and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have partnered with Omnicell, a leading provider of medication management solutions and adherence tools for health systems and pharmacies, to create a new two-year pharmacy informatics fellowship.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) Department of Biomedical Informatics's (DBMI) monthly newsletter, DBMI Digest, is now available to view. Read the July 2022 DBMI Digest here. Each DBMI Digest features department & faculty announcements, awards & appointments, educational & HR updates, funding opportunities and more. Each issue also includes a profile of one of our faculty, staff, postdocs and students. 

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has received a five-year, $4.5 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to assess clinical outcomes and economic value of screening large, diverse health care populations for disease risk using polygenic risk scores. A polygenic risk score (PRS) uses hundreds to thousands of genetic variants in a person’s genome to measure genetic risk for a given disease.

We are excited to open this year's application window for the 2022-2023 DBMI Catalyzing Informatics Innovation (CI2) program. The CI2 program supports faculty in the development of early-stage, innovative and impactful informatics-based projects that have the potential to improve health, healthcare, or discovery. The CI2 Program awardees receive not only modest funding to pursue their proposed project, but also join a cohort of CI2 Fellows who work closely with faculty and VUMC leadership.