Team

Dr. Peterson is an internationally recognized researcher and educator in Biomedical Informatics and maintains an Internal Medicine practice at VUMC. He has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications, abstracts, reviews, and book chapters. Dr. Peterson's research interests are in precision medicine with a focus on clinical decision support to improve drug safety and efficacy, and the translation of genomic technologies to routine clinical care. He has led the design and implementation of multiple clinical decision support systems oriented towards geriatric patients, the critically ill, patients with acute and chronic kidney disease, and most recently for patients tested within a large pharmacogenomics implementation - PREDICT. He currently serves as a principal investigator for an NIH funded project to simulate the clinical impact and cost-effectiveness of performing sequencing across large populations over their lifetime. He is also active within a variety of NIH sponsored research consortia including, eMERGE where he leads the Coordinating Center, and IGNITE where he is principal investigator of the I3P clinical sites recruiting for Genomic Medicine randomized clinical trials. Dr. Peterson was the founding Program Director for the Masters of Applied Clinical Informatics (MSACI) program, which trains physicians and other health professionals in the field of Clinical Informatics. He currently directs the Vanderbilt Genomic Medicine training program.

Dr. Hao’s research interests focus on economic evaluations of health services and programs which aim to improve patient outcomes through promoting personalized/precision healthcare. Specifically, in 3 sub-areas:

1. Economic evaluation of genome sequencing and pharmacogenomics. Project examples include: MyCode return of results to patients and providers, Rational Integration of Clinical SEquencing (RISE), universal Lynch Syndrome screening, and HLA-B*1502 genotyping and carbamazepine induced side effects.
2. Economic evaluation of risk-stratified disease prevention and treatment approach, e.g. cancer. Relevant projects include: new staging system of Squamous Cell Carcinomas of the Oropharynx, risk-prediction biomarker test which predicts progression risk of Barrett’s esophagus to esophageal adenocarcinoma, and new test which predicts risk of pre-eclampsia.
3. Evaluation of clinical innovation programs focusing on medication adherence, healthcare utilization and costs.

The quantitative research methods she uses include decision analysis modeling and simulation, biostatistics and econometrics methods by utilizing electronic health records, claims data, both internal and national cost data sources and by systematic evidence synthesis.

Dr. Veenstra is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacy and Associate Director of the Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy & Economics (CHOICE) Institute. He graduated from the University of California San Francisco with doctoral degrees in clinical pharmacy and computational chemistry. He conducted his postdoctoral training in health economics and outcomes research with the University of Washington, including a one-year externship with Roche Global Pharmacoeconomics.

Dr. Veenstra’s primary research interests are the clinical, economic, and policy implications of using genomic information in healthcare. His major research projects include evaluation of the cost effectiveness of population-level genomic screening, pharmacogenomics in diverse populations, decision modeling techniques to assess evidence thresholds, and stakeholder preferences for precision medicine.

Dr. Veenstra’s research has been funded through grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute, Centers for Disease Control, National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute for General Medical Sciences.

Dr. Veenstra has worked extensively with organizations such as the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) to further the practical application of cost-effectiveness analysis in managed care decision making.

Dr. Veenstra teaches courses in pharmacoeconomics and managed care and is an author or co-author of five book chapters and over 180 peer-reviewed publications.