InformaticCon Fall 2026

InformaticCon Program

VCLIC hosted its fifth annual InformaticCon event on September 9th, 2026 from 11:00am - 2:30pm. The event took place in the North Lobby and Room 214 of Light Hall. We had a fantastic turnout (possibly too fantastic as for the first time ever we ran out of lunch--sorry about that)! Attendees of the event enjoyed a panel session with our five "Ideas to Impact" participants, several impactful lightning talks, and during the last hour of the event, a poster session with the most presenters we've ever had--40! We had judges roaming the poster session and awarded a total of 6 Outstanding Poster Awards (annotated below with ***). We hope you were able to make it, but for those who were unable to attend, please see below for an archive of all the talks and posters we are able to share! We are already looking forward to next year! 

Panel: Ideas to Impact

Eva Dye, DNP, NNP-BC - NICU IV Fluid Calculations

Elena Evans, BS - Increase Celiac Disease Testing in High-Risk Individuals

Alvin Jeffery, PhD, RN, CCRN, FNP-BC and Brian Douthit, PhD, RN, NI-BC - SACRED: Spiritual Analytics and Clinical Reporting from EHR Data

Jason Samuels, MD - Use of EHR to Enhance Weight Loss Trajectory Monitoring

Aviva Mattingly, MD, MS - Perioperative Head and Neck Free Flap Education and Discharge Safety

Lightning Talks

Casie Smith, MHA, RRT-NPS - Risk Scoring Tool for Prevention of NICU Unplanned Extubations

Barron Patterson, MD - Watch Our Wizardry: The Magic Well Child SmartSet

Ivo Su, BS - Beyond Clinical Questions: Using an AI Chatbot to Identify and Address Institutional Workflow Needs

Michael Dunn, MD - High Adoption Rates and Satisfaction with eConsent via Patient Portal for Endoscopy

Peter Samuel, DO - Interruptive Alerts and Metabolic Screening for Behavioral Health Patients Taking Antipsychotics

Cathy Shyr, PhD - liteOdyssey: An AI Agent for Supporting Rare Disease Diagnostic Reasoning

Mert Sekmen, BS; Nikita Amanna, MS; and Jasleen Gandhi, MS - A Framework for Real-Time Clinical Decision Support Using Ambient Listening

Poster Presentations

Mollie Hobensack, PhD, RN, NI-BC - Leveraging Large Language Models to Analyze Nursing Free-text Comments to Understand What Matters Most to Older Adults

Bryan Steitz, PhD - Development and Internal Validation of a Large Language Model Pipeline for Multi-label Classification  

James Jordano, MD - Large Language Models as a Scalable Alternative to Chart Review for Antibiotic Stewardship Audit of Emergency Department Upper Respiratory Infections

Hyunjoon Lee, MS - Primary Care Provider Responses to Suicide Risk Screening: Real-World Evidence from Clinical Notes***

Sonanya Woldegebriel - Utilizing LLMs to Identify Inconsistencies in Clinical Notes

Janelle Faiman, BA - Chatbot Evaluation Tools: What Features are Helpful to Annotators?***

Julia Sheffield, PhD - Characterizing Artificial Intelligence Psychosis in a Large Medical Setting

Siru Liu, PhD - Encounter Characteristics Associated with Ambient Artificial Intelligence Scribe Use in Primary Care

Sarah Stern, MD, MS-ACI - Clinical Impacts of Automating Routine Care Processes

Stephanie Patterson, MD, MS - Instant Orders for Discharge Food Support for Inpatients with Food Insecurity***

Frederic Vallejo, MD, MSCI - Coags and the Neurosurgery Consultation

Udaya Sri Satya Sai Vaddi, MS - Automated Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) Discharge Follow-up Alert to Improve Continuity of Care for High-Risk Neonates

Ellen Stallings, MD - Clinical Decision Support to Enhance Risk-Based Prevention of Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting

Cosby Stone, Jr., MD, MPH - Closing the Quality Gaps in Antibiotic Allergy Labeled Patients***

Caleb Ashbrook, MD - Feasibility of Implementation, Diagnostic Accuracy, and End-User Impact of an Electronic Health Record (EHR)-based Ureteral Stent Tracking Tool in a Pediatric Population

Gwendolyn Thompson, MS - ECMO Alert

MaryLou Smith, MSN, CNM, FACNM - OB Express Lanes

Alexander Bruno, MD - Fetal Connections: Vanderbilt's Application in the Foundation System Improves Congenital Heart Disease Clinical Practices

Adam Kotter, PhD - Targeted Mitigation of Performance Disparities in a Sepsis Prediction Model

Joseph Dye - Evaluating the Accuracy of Clinician-Estimated Dates of Discharge in the NICU

Zachary Melvin, MS - Future Labor Productivity: A Predictive Decision Support Tool for Proactive Workforce Planning

Pradeep Mummidi, MMHC, MS- Quality Analytics AI Assistant: An Intelligent Decision Support Tool for Statistical Process Control***

Jonathan Tucci, MD, PhD - Using Artificial Intelligence and refineR on Big Data to Unmask Chloride-Driven Anion Gap Differences Across the Vanderbilt Laboratory Enterprise

Lyndsay Nelson, PhD and Kelsey LeBEau, PhD - Balancing Efficiency and Equity: Differences in Reach and Identified Social Needs Across Electronic and In-Clinic Health-Related Social Needs Screening

Hannah Slater, MS - Needs Assessment for Asynchronous Suicide Risk Assessment and Intervention

Alice Moore - Evaluating the Impact of Centralized Prescription Renewal on Efficiency and Experience in Ambulatory Care

Kira Sowell, BSN, MSN and Brian Douthit, PhD, RN, NI-BC - AI-Enabled Patient Education: A Roadmap to Better Outpatient Infusion Center Outcomes***

Megan Salwei, PhD - Improving Personalized Breast Cancer Care Through a COMputerized Patient Adaptable Shared Decision-Making System (COMPASS)

Michael Cauley, PhD, DMin - Humanizing the Electronic Health Records: Early EHR Integration of a Validated Photo-Narrative Intervention at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt

Austin Griffin, MD - SCRIBE: A Procedural Informatics Pilot in the TEE Lab

Brandi Cherry, CPA; Robert McCartney, MS; and Jacky King, MBA - Get to Know the VUMC Enterprise Data Platform

Janos Mathe, PhD - From Tables to Truth: Domain-Driven Knowledge Graphs for Clinical Informatics

Jacqueline Shaia, PhD - From HEYEX to OMOP: Lessons Learned Connecting a Retinol OCT Repository to the EHR at an Academic Medical Center

Grace Van Winkle, MPH - Research Considerations in Informatics

Tony Dreher, MPA - Development and Implementation of a Transplant Research Informatics Infrastructure Within the Vanderbilt Center for Transplant Science (VCTS)

Ashley Spann, MD, MS-ACI - Development and Deployment of an EHR-Integrated Randomized Trial for Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD)

Donald Sengstack, MS - Overcoming Data Challenges for Improved Ophthalmology Research

Kelly Fussman, MS, CCC-SLP - Streamlining Vestibular Audiology Documentation in Epic

Laura Zahn, MS - A Qualitative Evaluation of VUMC's Physician Builder Program: Perspectives from Clinical and HealthIT Leaders

Brandon Buxton, MS - Communication Tool Pilot for High Acuity Multi-Disciplinary Inpatient Team Consultation