Benjamin Collins is a postdoctoral fellow in ethics, legal, and social issues of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare working with the Biomedical Informatics and Biomedical Ethics departments. He is also a graduate of the clinical informatics fellowship program at Oregon Health & Science University, where he also earned an MS in Biomedical Informatics with a capstone project completed on the development of an online training module for clinicians on algorithmic bias in healthcare. 

Clinically, he is a graduate of the Temple University Hospital internal medicine residency program and practices as a hospitalist. During residency, he also earned an M.A. in Urban Bioethics from Temple with a thesis on, “A Theory of Sociotechnical Justice in Healthcare.” He is interested in the use of AI to support the functions of clinical decision support and to improve health care and outcomes for all. This includes working to ensure that AI does not contribute to healthcare outcome differences through qualitative research, community engagement, and improving clinician education & training in the use of AI. Outside of informatics he is also interested in medical education, narrative medicine, and medical philosophy. He is also active as a volunteer in AMIA. 

In November 2022, Dr. Collins was awarded the 2022 Academic Forum Best Paper Award for his paper "Development of an Online Training Module on Algorithmic Bias in Health Care for Clinicians" at the AMIA 2022 Annual Symposium. 

He practices clinically part-time as a hospitalist at VUMC.

Fall 2022-Spring 2024
I was born and raised right outside of Pittsburgh, PA and have been in Lexington, KY the last 6 years for school. I attended the University of Kentucky for two years of undergrad, followed by four years of pharmacy school. The last three years of receiving my PharmD, I was also in the evening MBA dual‐degree professional program. The MBA program allowed me to work with all genres of healthcare professionals and gain/respect different perspectives when it comes to business decisions. During those 3 years, I took the liberty to further expand my knowledge by receiving the Project Management and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certifications through Transplace. Around the time of graduation, I accepted a post‐doctoral fellowship at Omnicell / Wake Forest Baptist Health.

During my advanced pharmacy practice rotations I took a healthcare informatics rotation, where I worked a lot with IT problem solving (i.e. ScriptPro and Epic interfaces), shadowing multiple administration meetings, and completing projects for a UK Clinic to help better standardize their pharmacy practices (updated call sheet, cheat sheet for billing codes, binder for IT tickets). What I am looking forward to the most in the MS‐ACI didactic portion is the chance to understand those interfaces on a more clinical level and appreciate all they can do to help streamline a healthcare facility.

Learn more about the Omnicell-MSACI partnership here.

Fall 2022-Spring 2024

Jay Patel graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a PharmD degree. He is now pursuing a fellowship with Omnicell, partnered with Henry Ford Hospital, in Michigan focused on clinical informatics.

He has a strong interest in understanding and improving the evolution and integration of digital technology within our healthcare system. He has experience with evaluating the current digital landscape, conducting epidemiological research, working directly with patients and healthcare professionals, and more. 

Read more about the Omnicell-MSACI partnership here.

Fall 2022-Spring 2024 (Omnicell Fellow)

My name is Nick Goldsmith, and I will be completing this program as part of my Post‐Doctoral Informatics Fellowship. My fellowship is sponsored by Omnicell, but I will be working at VUMC. I recently completed my PharmD and Master of Health‐Services Administration at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Erie, PA. Prior to professional school, I completed my BS in Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.

Professionally, I hope to be a leader in health‐system pharmacy operations or work in industry pharmacy in automation and technology. I hope to gain more formal training in informatics during this program, so that I could leverage that knowledge to advance pharmacy operations in a hospital setting. I hope to bridge the gap of knowledge that is often present between clinicians, administrators, and people in informatics or data science. Already having experience in the clinical pharmacy and administrative aspects, I feel I bring good value, but there is a lot I could learn from the informatics perspective. I completed an administrative rotation with a director of pharmacy, that heavily involved implementing Omnicell technology, and using data to optimize workflow, but I feel as though I barely scratched the surface of what I can do as far as informatics goes. I am excited to work on Omnicell automation and technology projects at VUMC and believe this program will complement the work very well.

Read more about the Omnicell partnership with the MSACI program here.

Fall 2022-Spring 2024

I am an ophthalmologist practicing at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute where I see and surgically treat patients with glaucoma. In the ophthalmology department, I am also the glaucoma fellowship program director and involved with resident education and interviewing. With an interest in technology, I have been part of the department's Epic physician build team to help modify and optimize the EHR for our ophthalmologists and optometrists. I also have been involved in department projects, both research and operations, to assist in extracting information from the EHR or in interpreting the data with statistics.

In the MS‐ACI program, I am hoping to learn about more than just informatics' current applications in ophthalmology. I am interested in learning the potential of informatics to leverage the years of clinical data and imaging studies obtained on our department's patients to speed diagnosis and assist making treatment decisions. Along the way, I hope to establish connections with others in non‐ophthalmology roles to get a different perspective and to share ideas and techniques.

Fall 2022-Spring 2024

Adam is native of Middle Tennessee and has been a part of the Vanderbilt community since 1997. He completed his undergraduate studies in electrical and biomedical engineering and immediately started working in healthcare informatics at VUMC. Professionally, he started working as an analyst/developer at VUMC in the anesthesia and perioperative space. Currently, he works as a director in HealthIT responsible for technical ownership of clinical applications in the perioperative and procedural space across our health system.

In the MS‐ACI program, he hopes to gain greater exposure and knowledge of clinical informatics outside of the periop arena and to build relationships within the program that can foster innovation and concepts to better the field of healthcare informatics.

Formerly a MS in Applied Clinical Informatics student (Fall 2022-Spring 2024) and fellow of the DBMI Clinical Informatics Program. Current Medical Director for AI at HOPPR, attending radiologist at Imagen.

Originally from Chicago, Dr. Julie Bauml has worked as a radiologist in private practice as well as in academics. She graduated medical school from UI Chicago in 2010 and did her radiology residency there as well, and completed an MRI fellowship at UW Madison. She has worked as an attending physician at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, an assistant professor in radiology at UI Chicago Hospital, and private practice in the Chicago suburbs.

Dr. Bauml started her 2‐year clinical informatics fellowship in July 2022 and completed it in July of 2024 and as part of it, completed a masters in the MS‐ ACI program as well. Her interests are in the world of imaging informatics including AI/ML solutions (both interpretive and non‐interpretive) and leveraging extended reality for diagnostic imaging.

Since matriculating from Vanderbilt, Dr. Bauml has stayed on as an adjunct professor and guest lecturer for DBMI.  She has been able to engage with her AI interests at her role of Medical Director for AI at HOPPR, an AI startup working on medical imaging foundational model development.  Dr. Bauml also consults for multiple other companies in the medical imaging technology space, including Luxsonic (working on VR headsets for portable radiology reading capabilities).  She stays clinically active by reading patient exams remotely for Imagen, which is also an AI company that uses its clinical data to develop AI algorithms.