Informatics Center Innovations

History of E3 at VUMC Background In 1999, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s patient volumes began to increase dramatically. The leader for the outpatient ambulatory areas, David Posch, and the leader for the Informatics Center, Dr. Bill Stead, decided to replace the paper processes in the 100+ outpatient clinics with electronic medical records. It was projected that removing paper processes by using an electronic medical record in outpatient areas would greatly cut costs,... (read more)	History of E5 at VUMC Background With the success of the E3 effort, Vanderbilt University Medical Center started a new program, code-named E5, designed to bring the informatics successes from E3 into the Vanderbilt hospitals. Co-led by Chief Nursing Officer Marilyn Dubree and VUH Chief of Staff Dr. C. Wright Pinson, E5's goals were to, by the end of 2005: Extend... (read more)
History of CICS at VUMC Background A central component of the Eskind Biomedical Library's (EBL) philosophy of clinical librarianship is the vital importance of participating in an environment in order to understand it fully. The unique nature of the clinical environment makes it essential for librarians to become a part of the health care team to serve the different viewpoints it encompasses. As a means of bri... (read more)	History of RxStar at VUMC RxStar is a software application created by the Vanderbilt Informatics Center to reduce opportunities for medical error when prescribing drugs for patients. This program is integrated with the Vanderbilt electronic health record, StarPanel, and it contains a series of features designed to improve patient safety without compromising system speed or usability. Besides producing prescriptions that are 100 percent legible, RxStar automatically checks each new prescription against a patien... (read more)
History of WizOrder at VUMC Background WizOrder is a computerized clinician order entry system continuously developed by DBMI faculty, working with Informatics Center staff and trainees. WizOrder is used “at the point of care” to support clinicians as they make important decisions regarding a patient’s clinical course, and the system helps to ensure the highest quality of care for VUMC patients while reducing medical errors. It incorporates relevant information resources to... (read more)	History of StarChart/StarPanel at VUMC StarChart is the clinical data repository and electronic patient record system at VUMC, containing data for over 1.8 million individual patients. It stores more than 65 million documents, including all pathology reports and clinical laboratory results, radiology reports, the results of all diagnostic studies, and all electronic clinical documentation. Documentation that is only available on paper is scanned, converted to an electronic image that is stored in StarChart, and shredde... (read more)
History of IAIMS at VUMC In 1991, Dr. William W. Stead (then Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs) and other key figures submitted a grant proposal to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to develop an innovative "fast-track" approach to an Integrated Academic Information System (IAIMS). This IAIMS project, which began in 1993 and officially concluded in early 2001, leveraged common outcomes of previous IAIMS as a means of reducing the overall project timeframe. As a result, the Informatics Center... (read more)