From Health Systems to Learning Systems: The Journeys of Four Pioneers

Presentation Type: Panel
2026 Symposium Spotlight Presentation

Presentation Time: 03:30 PM - 04:45 PM

Abstract Keywords: Healthcare Quality, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility, Governance, Knowledge Representation & Information Modeling, Informatics Implementation
Programmatic Theme: Academic Informatics / LIEAF

Learning Health Systems (LHS) can exist at different levels of scale: individual health care delivery organizations, networks of organizations, and within the boundaries of states or provinces. This panel will focus on individual organizations, recognizing that the "LHS status" of an organization is not binary. An organization's journey to increasing LHS maturity does not start at zero and can proceed along many paths. Accordingly, this panel will begin by offering a model for describing LHS maturity and then describe the paths toward greater maturity taken by four organizations: Denver Health, the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota, and Vanderbilt University. These organizations differ in many respects and have pursued distinctive paths. Their paths are similar in that informatics plays critical roles in all four. The role of informatics will be highlighted in all presentations.

Moderator:
Charles Friedman, PhD
University of Michigan

Speaker(s):
Laura Podewils, PhD
Denver Health

Peter Embi, MD, MS
VUMC

Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, FACMI
University of Minnesota

Author(s):
Charles Friedman, PhD - University of Michigan; Peter Embi, MD, MS - VUMC; Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, FACMI - University of Minnesota; Laura Podewils, PhD - Denver Health;