News

One in 100 people have genetic variations that can cause potentially life-threatening heart conditions, including high cholesterol (lipid disorders), heart muscle disease (cardiomyopathies), and abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). Yet the functional impact of most of these cardiovascular genetic variants — whether they disrupt normal function or are harmless — is unknown. That is about to change.

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 2022 Vanderbilt Biomedical Informatics Summer Program (VBISP) will be coming to an end on Friday, August 5, 2022. Our summer students have worked diligently throughout the summer in preparation for their final presentations on August 1, August 2, and August 3 from 1-3 pm each day. Be sure to tune in!

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.