Unique among academic health centers, Vanderbilt University Medical Center 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.

The synergy between an academic department and the Informatics Center 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 resources (the Informatics Center budget totals over twenty-five million dollars annually). 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. Faculty and trainees are therefore involved in a host of activities and projects within the Department, the Informatics Center, and throughout the Vanderbilt University campus. The aligning of research and clinical missions also serves as a mechanism to align research interests with the strategic initiatives of the medical center. Students learn how to exploit knowledge from a rigorous academic program in order to design, implement, and evaluate real-world informatics applications. 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.

Through recent faculty recruitment of nationally prominent individuals, aggressive buildup of informatics infrastructure, and highly successful and nationally important research projects, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has become a national leader in Biomedical informatics. The sections to the left represent a subset of the many historical and ongoing initiatives of the DBMI.

Projects website on Vanderbilt network (VUNETID required - opens in new window): Projects.