Informatics in the Round

Clinical Trials: Are We Whitewashing the Data?

Is every clinical trial created equal? In this episode, we learn some shocking information about the proportions of populations normally included in clinical trials. We specifically cover recent treatments for Alzheimer’s disease to discuss how we may have failed to consider minority populations in our research and how we can use precision medicine to create more equitable clinical trials. We also discuss how we can redevelop trust in scientific institutions in the wake of the pandemic and how health professionals can adapt their research techniques to include data from historically underrepresented populations.
We had a wonderful cast join us for this episode. We had Stephanie Monroe, Vice President and Senior Advisor of Health Equity and Access for UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, a national advocacy group that aims to diversify the movement to cure Alzheimer’s disease. After working on Capitol Hill and holding the position of Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights for three years, Stephanie’s work has focused on raising awareness about the disparate impact of Alzheimer’s disease on communities of color and women.
We also had Consuelo Wilkins, Senior Vice President and Senior Associate Dean of Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence, and a Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and works with the All of Us Research Program, a national precision medicine project. She is also the Principal Investigator of three NIH-funded centers which aim to decrease health disparities for communities of color and create new approaches to recruiting marginalized communities for clinical trials. 
This conversation was so fun and yielded so many valuable insights regarding how we can create more equitable research for communities of color. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Interested in how misinformation circulates? Listen to our previous podcast episode with guest Evan Thornburg.
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
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Getting ”Dis”ed: Battling Misinformation and Disinformation on Social Media

In this episode, we tackle an all-too-familiar topic: misinformation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen how technology and social media can be used to both spread health information awareness and popularize misinformation. The question remains: in the age of technology, how can we be sure about the validity of the information we are receiving online, and how can we all be vigilant against the spread of misinformation?
To help us, we had the wonderful Evan Thornburg join us for today's podcast. Evan is a bioethicist and health equity officer for the City of Pennsylvania's Department of Public Health. In the past, they've also worked in the Philadelphia Mayor's Office as Deputy Director of LGBT. After completing a Master's of Arts in Urban Bioethics at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine and writing their thesis on the spread of misinformation, Evan took to TikTok, utilizing the platform to share their knowledge about bioethics, comment on current health news, and challenge the online community to be discerning about how they absorb and converse about health information. You can find Evan on TikTok at EVN the (Bio) Ethicist.
We loved talking with Evan, and we hope you come out of this episode with some practical tools to help you filter the information you see on social media!
Learn more about ethical research conduct from government websites such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association. 
Check out what the American Board of Internal Medicine has to say about the rise of misinformation:
-https://blog.abim.org/an-update-on-our-efforts-to-address-medical-misinformation/
-https://blog.abim.org/new-paper-recommends-creating-a-durably-funded-infrastructure-for-media-monitoring-and-effective-coordinated-responses-to-medical-misinformation/
Learn more about the work Desmond Upton Patton is doing with SAFELab here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/research/centers/safe-lab
Make sure to follow our Instagram, Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and Facebook accounts so you can stay up to date on all our new content. Also don't forget to follow us on Twitter @kbjohnsonmd and @htbland21. You can also find us wherever you typically get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
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Reframing Minds: Combatting Medical Inequities with Data

In this episode, we look at the genetic basis for different psychiatric disorders, the interconnectedness of psychological and physical symptoms, and how they apply to our ongoing conversation regarding health equity. For this episode, we welcomed back some of our previous guests:
Lea Davis Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Division of Genetic Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her work explores the genomic architecture of complex traits, defined as the type, frequency, and function of DNA variants en masse that contribute to the genetic predisposition of a given trait.
We also welcomed back the talented Jane Bach, a successful songwriter from Nashville, to help us dissect how exactly gene inheritance works and share her stories and music with us! Ellie Shuert, our new production assistant from the University of Pennsylvania, also joined in for the discussion. They both made our conversation so lively and fun, and they really helped us dig deep into the fundamentals of genetics and the importance of listening intentionally to patients' stories and symptoms.
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The Future of AI in Medicine: Aladdin’s Lamp, or Pandora’s Box?

In this episode, we talk a bit about the recent advances in large language models, also known as GPT/ChatGPT.  We have two wonderful guests:
Christoph U. Lehmann, M.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics, Population and Data Sciences, and Bioinformatics at UT Southwestern, where he directs the Clinical Informatics Center. In addition, Chris was the first chair of the Examination Committee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, Subcommittee for Clinical Informatics. Dr. Lehmann’s research focuses on improving clinical information technology and clinical decision support.
Yaa Kumah-Crystal Crystal MD, MPH, MS is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Yaa’s research focuses on studying communication and documentation in healthcare and developing strategies to improve workflow and patient care delivery. Yaa works in the Innovations Portfolio at Vanderbilt HealthIT on the development of Voice Assistant Technologies to improve the usability of the EHR through natural language communication.
Chris and Yaa bring very complementary perspectives to the topic of our future. Yaa's research focuses on how we can innovate to improve the use of technology in medicine. Chris is also internationally known as the Editor in Chief of Applied Clinical Informatics,
as well as one of the leaders in our clinical informatics board certification work.  He is intimately familiar with the potential uses of this technology beyond clinical care, but, as an actively practicing neonatologist, more than holds his own when it comes to how medicine can benefit from--or be harmed by--new technologies such as AI. 
We leave it to you to decide both which direction we're heading, and how we can put up the guardrails to keep us on the preferred track. And, I suspect this won't be our last discussion about AI in Medicine!

Informatics and Health Equity - A Critical Partnership

This episode is going to introduce the concepts of health equity and biomedical informatics. We'll revisit this theme multiple times in 2023 but ST and I wanted to kick off the year with this overview that will also serve to provide a framework for some of what we will be discussing as we revisit this theme. We are really lucky to have two guests, both of whom are great colleagues and friends, whose careers have focused on this topic from two very different disciplines.
Lea Davis Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Division of Genetic Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her work explores the genomic architecture of complex traits, defined as the type, frequency, and function of DNA variants en masse that contribute to the genetic predisposition of a given trait.
Consuelo H. Wilkins, MD, MCSI, is a nationally recognized physician-scientist leader in health equity research focused on integrating social, cultural, and environmental factors into clinical and translational research. Dr. Wilkins is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is Senior Vice President, Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence, VUMC; and Senior Associate Dean, Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
 We also welcome back The Daily Fare Northern-born songwriters Alissa Abeler and Hannah Smith who’ve joined creative forces to form a musical duo with a unique sound and look for Nashville performers. The pair grew up on opposite sides of the music world with influences ranging from Judy Garland and Adele to Beethoven and Bach, with a healthy dose of Broadway, punk cabaret, and 80s ballads sprinkled in the mix.  They also share a story common with many newish groups breaking into the music biz that makes the topic of today one they relate to in ways you’ll readily appreciate.
St and I tried to keep this at high level, but we also weren’t afraid to push our friends to explain some difficult concepts. It was as important a discussion as it was enlightening and engaging, and I’m glad to be able to share it with the world. 

Fixing Medical Documentation - Less ”Whine” with your Cheese!

This episode, ST and I cover one of the hottest non-COVID topics in healthcare today.  We strike at the heart of clinician burnout and in particular issues related to unnecessary documentation.
Our guests today were discovered by Sam Butler from Epic, who invited them to present their incredible work at a national meeting where I was an attendee. I  thought this was work that needed to get noticed as quickly as possible. And so we decided to develop this podcast to discuss what they’ve been doing.
Dr. Heidi Twedt is Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, UW Health, and Clinical Professor of the division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Dr. Peter Kleinschmidt is the Medical Informatics Director of Quality and Safety and Assistant Professor in the division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin.
The two of them have developed an entire program dedicated to reducing the length and complexity of physician documentation.  As they tell us during the episode, it's simple to implement technically, but, as one might imagine, very challenging to make "sticky" from a change management perspective. 
 
By the way, here's a link to a presentation by Heidi and Peter for those who want to hear more about this.
 

Health Information Exchanges: Myths and Realities

 
This promises to be an incredibly informative podcast for most of us.,  If there was anything learned from the pandemic, it was the importance of data and helping most of us track SARS CoV2 prevalence wherever we traveled when we traveled, as well as to manage vaccine compliance within specific regions or states.  Health information exchange was vital to many public health organizations. And our speakers today were front and center during the pandemic, as well as in some cases, decades before the pandemic, evangelizing this technology for the rest of us. We’ll hear from them and discuss both what health information exchange is and what health information hubs could be going forward. I learned a ton during this podcast. I hope you enjoy it.  ST Bland and I are proud to introduce you to three guests:
Brian Dixon is a Professor at Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and a world expert on the public health information ecosystem, including how things are accomplished and the information or tech used to accomplish them.
John Kansky is President and CEO at Indiana Health Information Exchange in Indianapolis, which is arguably the exemplar for health information exchanges around the world.
Morgan Honea is Executive VP of Contexture an IT services and consulting group in Denver and CEO of CSRI, the Consortium for State and Regional Interoperability, as well as CEO of CORHIO. The Colorado Regional Health Information Organization.

Overturning Roe: The Meteor that Hit Health Care

Hello and welcome to Informatics in the Round,  a podcast designed to help everyone become a part of the dialog about topics in biomedical informatics. 
I’m Kevin Johnson, a physician and informatics researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. @kbjohnsonmd on Twitter, www.kevinbjohnsonmd.net on the web! 
The overturning of Roe v. Wade has had a significant impact on our country. What many may not realize is the impact it might have across all of the health care system as we know it, including the informatics community.  However, this episode will enlighten us all about this, and, unfortunately, will probably make a few people lose sleep.
We are joined in this episode by Professor Bradley Malin, Accenture Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics, and Computer Science, as well as Vice Chair for Research Affairs in the Department of Biomedical Informatics.  He is one of the world’s experts on data privacy, having invented or helped to debunk myths around the most common approaches used to protect electronic medical records from use or to facilitate safe data sharing.  He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).  In addition, he was honored as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House.
Brad is joined by Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, JD, MD. Ellen is an internationally respected leader in the field of law and genomics who holds appointments in Pediatrics and in Health Policy at VUMC, and in the Law School as well as the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University. Ellen has helped to develop policy statements for numerous national and international organizations, including the Public Population Project in Genomics, Human Genome Organization, Council of International Organizations of Medical Sciences, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Ellen has worked on a number of projects for the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) and is currently a member of its National Advisory Council, director of its Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, and the Report Review Committee. For her service, she received the David P. Rall Medal from the IOM in 2013.  
In addition to these amazing guests, we’re excited to have ST Bland, a leader in Vanderbilt’s Center for Precision Medicine here, as well as Jane Bach, an extremely successful “performing” songwriter in Nashville. Jane is joined again by Jeanie McQuinn of http://www.greatbigrivermusic.com, a partner with Jane in songwriting.