by Mia Garcitorena
Travis Osterman, DO, MS, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI), Hematology and Oncology and director of Cancer Clinical Informatics at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), has been appointed to a new role as Associate Vice President for Research Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Osterman will report to Peter Embí, MD, MS, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, and Neal Patel, MD, MPH, chief information officer for Health IT at VUMC.
In this leadership role, Osterman will be responsible for helping advance VUMC’s research capabilities, particularly at the interface with VUMC Research and Health IT enterprises. Examples of his responsibilities will include advancing the use of electronic health record-based functionality for clinical and translational research, working with colleagues across VUMC to improve data accessibility for research, and leading efforts to align clinical and research genomics initiatives.
“VUMC has a long history of creating, organizing and growing informatics resources such as BioVU to support our research mission,” said Osterman. “In this new role, I look forward to working with our community to further grow those existing resources, identify and develop new opportunities and reduce investigators’ barriers to accessing data.”
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Dr. Osterman over the past year and seeing him apply his expertise and leadership at the intersection of clinical care, health IT and research to advance our capabilities for translational discovery and data-driven improvements in research and care,” said Embí. “I’m excited to continue working with him in this new role as he leads our efforts to make VUMC an even stronger environment for accelerating research and innovation.”
“I have had the pleasure of working with Travis on many strategic initiatives and have always been impressed by his expert knowledge and skills at operationalizing informatics approaches to precision medicine, such as through his leadership of the Clinical Genomics Workstream,” said Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD, Chief Scientific and Strategy Officer for VUMC. “He is adept at working seamlessly between clinical, research, technical and administrative teams, and I am thrilled with his new role as we grow our research informatics capabilities at VUMC.”
“Dr. Osterman has done a remarkable job of integrating health care informatics for the benefit of our patients with cancer,” said Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, director of VICC, Benjamin F. Byrd, Jr. Professor of Oncology and professor of Medicine and Hematology and Oncology.
“He led efforts at VICC to integrate genomic/genetic data into our electronic health records which have had a tremendous positive impact for our patients with cancer, allowing their care providers easy access to their cancer’s molecular underpinnings so that we can match the right drug for each patient. It comes as no surprise that his role in our health system has been elevated so that he can continue to help make health care personal for every VUMC patient.”
Osterman completed his DO at Nova Southeastern University, his residency at Indiana University and his MS in biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University. He joined VUMC as a clinical fellow in medical oncology in July 2013, as faculty in 2016 and was named director of Cancer Clinical Informatics at VICC in July 2019.
In 2022, he was named chair of the executive committee for the Minimal Common Data Elements (mCODE) initiative, which serves as an internationally recognized standard for describing patients with cancer across the cancer care continuum regardless of the underlying electronic health record. mCODE is now implemented at over 60 health care centers across several countries.
