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Who We Are

CKM mission statement

Abstract imageUnder the leadership of Dr. Nunzia B. Giuse, Vice President for Knowledge Management, the Center for Knowledge Management actively contributes to the acquisition, creation, dissemination, reuse, and characterization of the institution’s information strata by holistically strengthening its metadata representation and evidence content.  CKM scientists possess an in-depth understanding of sound practices in knowledge management, spanning a wide array of disciplines from knowledge mining, content filtering, information seeking, and data organization.  Leveraging these strengths, CKM professionals are engaged in collaborations for extracting tacit knowledge residing within medical center personnel and systems, eliciting the subjective insight of experts, and retrieving and curating explicit knowledge.  CKM additionally creates new products and services for wide-scale information reuse which increase immediate and long-term institutional effectiveness. CKM’s broad collaborative approach and wealth of expertise aid the medical center in maintaining its competitive advantage as a healthcare organization. 

The CKM initiatives outlined below reflect the team’s response and approach towards current Vanderbilt Health priorities.

  • Establish and support best practices for extracting explicit, tacit, and embedded knowledge from multiple clinical systems and structure it for systematic update and reuse informed by timely evidence.
  • Advance precision/personalized medicine initiatives by aiding the integration of molecular and genetic variation information into clinical processes and systems to improve decision making and health outcomes.
  • Promote patient participation in their own healthcare through research initiatives and collaborations that develop and facilitate access to easy-to-understanding health information, patient engagement resources, and tools.
  • Scale integration of evidence into clinical practice through knowledge management strategies including knowledge mining, content filtering and structuring knowledge for reuse.
  • Develop knowledge management tools and platforms to facilitate the distribution and preservation of knowledge.
  • Curate, license, and provide access to critical evidence-based resources that are frequently linked to healthcare information systems.
  • Develop and support a knowledge management workforce by promoting an environment of lifelong learning.
  • Contribute to the advancement of best practices in the areas of data organization, selection of information, and in-depth subject knowledge with the purpose of targeted evidence provision, aiding information seekers finding relevant data.

Download the Synopsis for Grant Writers

Recent Publications/Presentations

  • Koonce TY, Giuse DA, Blasingame MN, Su J, William AM, Biggerstaff PL, Osterman TJ, Giuse NB. The personalization of evidence: using intelligent datasets to inform the process. American Medical Informatics Fall Symposium [virtual], November 2020.

  • DesAutels S, Su J, Blasingame MN, Williams AM, Koonce TY, Giuse NB. Capturing COVID-19 mortality reporting requirements: a knowledge management approach. Special Library Association (SLA) Annual Conference [virtual]. October 2020. (SLA’s 2020 Contributed Papers Session Winner)

  • Blasingame MN, Williams AM, Su J, Naylor HM, Koonce TY, Epelbaum MI, Kusnoor SV, Fox ZE, Lee P, DesAutels SJ, Frakes ET, Giuse NB. Bench to bedside: detailing the catalytic roles of fully integrated information scientists. Special Library Association Annual Meeting, Cleveland OH, June, 2019. (SLA’s 2019 Contributed Papers Session Winner)

  • DesAutels SJ, Giuse DA, Williams AM, Fox ZE, Blasingame MN, Giuse NB. EHR implementation: quantifying a costly communication and knowledge gap. AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference, Atlanta, April/May 2019.

  • Cronin RM, Natarajan K, Koonce TY, Tirhi S, Fowler, S. Beyond the EHR – using participants to enhance the EHR with participant provided information. American Medical Informatics Association 2019 Informatics Summit, March 28, 2019.