Genome-informed Care Decisions: Welcome to Cutting-edge Medicine!

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. 

To paraphrase Dorothy, “Exomes and genomes and VUSes…oh my!” Time to go back to high school biology, but not the version most of us took!!!!….the one they’re teaching now.  Our fourth episode of this year covers a very current informatics topic—how health care is using your genomic information to understand your symptoms and your diagnoses.  This idea of genome-informed medicine is a major part of precision medicine. It’s been at the center of cancer therapy for a few decades and is now becoming a part of health care beyond cancer. Here’s the rub: most doctors don’t know very much about it.  So it’s up to those of us who understand it and who specialize in informatics to come to the rescue. You’ll meet three such informatician/genomic medicine experts on this episode.

 

Sarah Bland, one of the most insightful and quick-witted people I have the pleasure of working with is on this podcast as both an expert in the issues and as the person who keeps it real.  

 

Melissa McPheeters is a public health informatics and epidemiology expert. For those of you who’ve been listening to IIR for over a year, you’ve heard Melissa discuss COVID with us before. However, her other life at Vanderbilt has been helping to coordinate and think critically about how we can bring patient’s genomics into the care of everyday physicians and advanced practices nurses. As you’ll see, although this is a relatively new area for her, she has mastered much of it!

 

Travis Osterman is a physician I’ve often called the doctor’s doctor (at least this doctor, should I ever get cancer.) He’s the consummate professional and a terrific communicator.  Because of his expertise in cancer informatics, he’s one of the most knowledgeable people in the country about genome-informed care, and brings that knowledge to a very challenging discussion.

We start off the discussion not with a songwriter/singer, but with a Songwriter/singer’s most essential team member. Gaelyn Garrett is Senior Executive Medical Director of the Vanderbilt Voice Center, Guy M. Maness Chair, Laryngology and Voice, and Professor of Otolaryngology.