Who We Are
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Dr. William W. Stead Director of the Informatics Center & Associate Vice-Chancellor for Health Affairs |
Unique among academic health centers, Vanderbilt Medical Center (VMC) entrusts its Informatics Center with the responsibility for: (a) providing the essential information infrastructure for patient care, management, research and education — including the support for informatics-related research and education in clinical informatics and the emerging field of bioinformatics (including new initiatives in genomics and proteomics); and, (b) fusing scholarly research in biomedical informatics with the dissemination of the resultant knowledge to individuals through its education programs and into operation through the infrastructure. Since the mid 1990’s VMC has recruited some of the most outstanding informatics professionals in the world today. These professionals focus their efforts on both clinical and biomedical informatics integration and collaboration. This integration is achieved at the operational level—knowledge is applied to real world problems on a day-to-day basis, at the services level—services reflect informatics knowledge, the research level—developing new and different ways to support research, and the administrative level.
This synergy from this group creates an unparalleled laboratory for informatics research, fostering multidisciplinary rapid prototyping and deployment of applied systems, and evaluation of their impact. Researchers have access to real-world problems and operational monies. Faculty members are encouraged to meld service responsibilities with research activities in a manner that leverages the clinical and research facilities of the university as an applied informatics laboratory. This process also serves as a mechanism to align research interests with the strategic initiatives of the medical center. The medical center benefits from a technology infrastructure and architecture that takes full advantage of the new science of biomedical informatics to achieve a scale of productivity not possible with traditional information systems.
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