That's a Wrap! Celebrating Five Years of Informatics in the Round

Well, here we are—the final episode of Informatics in the Round (we think!). After five incredible years, 38 episodes, and thousands of listeners, we’ve decided it’s time to wrap up this journey. But first, we’re taking a minute (or maybe two hours) to reflect on this wild ride—and we’ve brought some people you might recognize!

In this episode, we pull some clips from the archive to help us look back at our best moments, favorite topics, and silliest slip-ups over the years. We take you through our “Top 5” topics that we loved to talk about the most: electronic health records, patient privacy, public health, health equity, and AI. We will also share some stories you didn’t hear (like that time we forgot to hit records—oops), how the pandemic reshaped our personal and professional lives, and the lessons that will stick with us.

To lead us through our Top 5, we invited back some of our favorite guests to reflect and discuss the future of the field:

Dr. Yaa Kumah-Crystal, MD, MPH, MS, is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center whose research focuses on documentation in healthcare communication.

Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, JD, MD, is a professor of Pediatrics, Law, and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Law School and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics research.

Dr. Melissa McPheeters, PhD, MPH, is the Senior Director for Analytics at RTI International, as well as an esteemed epidemiologist and public health informatician. Her work focuses on building interdisciplinary teams to address complex problems across health, public health, and data modernization processes.

Dr. Consuelo H. Wilkins, MD, is the Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean of Health Equity at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Her work attempts to bring together community stakeholders and create collaboration initiatives to improve community health and biomedical research.

Dr. Chris Callison-Burch, PhD, MS, is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on natural language processing and generative AI.

So, is this really goodbye? Maybe, maybe not. We can never sit still for long. But for now, let’s raise a glass, share a few laughs, and remember the good ol’ times!

We can’t leave without saying thank you to all of you for being part of the ride, for listening to us on your jog or your commute, and for engaging critically with all we’ve had to say. It’s been an honor.

Thank you to all the guests who have joined us throughout the last five years. Thank you for contributing your expertise, your lived experiences, and your unfiltered thoughts. Thank you to the musicians who bravely stepped into conversations about topics they knew little about and for offering up their questions. You ensured we spoke to everyone, and your music said the rest of what our words couldn’t convey. To all our guests, your generosity with your time and your knowledge is what made this podcast what it was.

Our mission was always to make informatics intelligible so that you and all your friends and family can engage confidently with the topic. We hope you now have the language to feel empowered navigating this crazy, awesome, flawed, fascinating healthcare system.

For now, this is Kevin Johnson, Harris Bland, and Ellie Shuert signing off!

Mentioned in the episode:

-Hidden Brain podcast

-Scott Scovill and Moo TV, plus his appearance on episode 4: “Automated Resilience: Biomedical Informatics as a Safety Net for Life”

-Nancy Lorenzi in “Informatics and Anti-Black Racism: What We Need to Do” (Jun. 2020)

-Trent Rosenbloom in “21st Century Cures: Curing our Anxiety or Causing It?” (May 2021)

-Hey Epic!

-Brad Malin in “Data Privacy: Possible, Impossible, or Somewhere In Between?” (Aug. 2020)

-Moore v. Regents of the University of California (1990)

-”Learning Health Care and the Obligation to Participate in Research” by Ruth R. Faden and Nancy E. Kass (Hastings Center Report)

-”The Right to Privacy” by Samuel D. Warren II and Louis Brandeis (Harvard Law Review)

-Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell