Natalie Hsiao-Fang-Yen, MD, works as an internal medicine physician at Williamson Medical Center in Franklin, TN. Originally, she is from a small town called Wichita, Kansas. After earning her medical degree from the University of Limerick, Ireland, Dr. Hsiao-Fang-Yen completed her internal medicine residency at Meharry Medical College. She continues to mentor medical students at her Irish alma mater and supports educational activities as a community faculty member at the Thomas Frist College of Medicine. She worked as an investigator with clinical research organizations in the past where she performed studies involving stem cell treatments for osteoarthritis, COVID vaccines, and therapies for advanced asthma.

She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Applied Clinical Informatics at Vanderbilt University and is an active member of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Her research interests include workflow optimization in hospital settings, improving patient safety measures, and the use of artificial intelligence to help identify and diagnose disease.

Fall 2024-Spring 2026

Rebecca Flaherty is a program manager in the Department of Pharmacy at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. She earned her bachelor's degree from New York University and later completed a Master of Public Health at Boston University, focusing on healthcare management. During her studies in Boston, she found particular interest in lean management, healthcare delivery systems, and digital disruption in health. She gained valuable experience as a data coordinator for the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) clinical pathways team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and deepened her understanding of patient quality and safety. Upon returning to New York, she joined Mount Sinai, initially working with the 340B drug pricing program team before transitioning to my current role. She collaborated closely with the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, particularly its subcommittees like the Medication Safety Committee and the Anticoagulation Steering Committee. Her focus lies in standardizing policies and practices across the system, leveraging systems approaches to identify vulnerabilities and enhance care efficiency for both patients and providers. 

Fall 2024-Spring 2026

Tim Coffman is an application developer specializing in building SMART on FHIR applications and integrating them with VUMC eStar and EHRs at other institutions. His goal is to build and support an ecosystem of tools that enable clinicians, researchers, and others to build innovative new EHR-integrated tools as easily as possible. He's built systems here at VUMC to manage recurring oncology regimens, respond to voice queries, calculate risk factors for pneumonia and heart failure, and support exploring FHIR resources available in eStar.

Fall 2024-Spring 2026

Jacob Beckstead has been a research assistant at Vanderbilt University’s Pharmacology Department for eight years, investigating the roots of colorectal cancer metastasis and developing neuropharmacological research tools. His journey into clinical informatics began while investigating links between metastatic risk and atopic disease, where he manually reviewed thousands of patient records for study eligibility. This introduction to electronic health records (EHR) and the immense wealth of information they contain inspired me to pursue the efficient exchange of information between the research and clinical sectors. Additionally, the recent commercialization of large language models has opened new possibilities in data processing but has also introduced security risks. One of his chief goals as a researcher is to develop methods and policies to ensure the integrity of research models and the safety of patient data.

Parker Christy worked in the Alvin Jeffery lab for nearly two years at the Vanderbilt School of Nursing and has a customer service/tech support background. He joined DBMI in July 2024 as Associate Application Developer and is currently working closely with Alvin Jeffery to identify which phenotypes are at risk for or affected by substance use disorders and addiction leveraging natural language processing on clinical notes.

Emma DaSilva joined DBMI in July 2024. She received a bachelor's degree in public service and public policy from Arizona State University in 2021. And a bachelor's degree in healthcare administration from Sacred Heart University in 2022. After graduating, she took a position working at Nuvance Health in Connecticut, gaining experience in both the revenue cycle and finance departments. While working she earned her master's in healthcare administration from Tulane University. 

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I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. In 2021, I joined VUMC as part of the All of Us research program, where I contributed to groundbreaking efforts in personalized medicine and health data collection. Transitioning to the Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2024.

Dr. Katherine Musacchio Schafer is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. She is a clinical psychologist with expertise in the intersection of suicide prevention and informatics. She recently completed a two-year fellowship to equip her with strong training in healthcare quality improvement as well as translational and implementation sciences. She has published over 30 articles investigating risk factors for and treatment of suicidal ideation. Further, she has experience in the development of iOS applications, ambulatory treatments, and randomized control trials. She will be funded during her first two years under the P30 Rapid Learning Health Systems Grant during which time she will focus on qualitative research and application building in the development and evaluation of clinical decision support tools. 

Recent extramural funding includes a prestigious Child Intervention, Prevention, and Services fellowship through the National Institutes of Health as well as three dissertation awards from the Association of Behavior and Cognitive Therapies (Virginia Roswell Student Dissertation Award), Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, and the Military and Suicide Research Consortium Dissertation Award. Further, she received awards for her mentorship and teaching contributions from Florida State University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program.

Dr. Schafer has delivered invited talks at medical schools and conferences presentations at local, national, and international conferences. Her work received awards including Association of Behavior and Cognitive Therapies Veteran and Military Special Interest Group Student Poster Award and the Association of Behavior and Cognitive Therapies Suicide Self-Injury Special Interest Group Student Poster Award.

Clinically she specializes in the evidence based treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, primarily using Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure Therapy. She has received national accolades for her clinical work, with support coming from Military and Suicide Research Consortium Training Program and Beck Institute Soldier Suicide Prevention Scholarship Award.

Research interests: clinical decision support tools, implementation science, translational science, suicide prevention

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