Sometimes things get so busy I forget to update this page. We survived 2025 intact and are striving forward in 2026. We submitted papers and grant proposals, went to meetings, and continued to push our knowledge management, data science, AI, and digital health projects.
New Trainees:
Katya Vinokuroff – an MD-PhD student has just joined the lab to focus on AI and ML projects.
Kim Lanaghen – an MS student has just signed up to do her capstone with us on an AI chatbot project for NBS.
Chatbot Updates (NBSchat): Courtney Gauchel and I both presented our work on chatbots for newborn screening follow-up at the AMIA symposium and the APHL NBS symposium, respectively. We also had a little roadshow organized by the APHL, and as a result of this outreach, we are working with some states on piloting NBSchat. That is very exciting. I also presented NBSchat at a local celebration of science symposium, and this week at the Digital Health Initiative.
The paper describing the infrastructure came out recently: Del Fiol G, Borsato E, Bradshaw RL, Bian J, Woodbury A, Gauchel C, Eilbeck KL, Maxwell W, Ellis K, Madeo AC, Schlechter C, Kukhareva PV, Allen CG, Kean M, Elkin EB, Sharaf R, Ahsan MD, Frey M, Davis-Rivera L, Kohlmann WK, Wetter DW, Kaphingst KA, Kawamoto K. GARDE-Chat: a scalable, open-source platform for building and deploying health chatbots. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2026 Jan 10:ocaf211. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocaf211. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41524720; PMCID: PMC12798686.
The NBSchat paper is currently under revision. Check back soon…
We also published a paper detailing the workflow analysis for SCT communication:
Taber P, Baysinger J, Daniels S, Diaz-Kincaid N, Gaviglio A, Ginter J, Held PK, Reeves E, Sack V, Weaver J, Eilbeck K. Participatory Workflow Analysis of Newborn Genetic Screening (NBS) to Support Tools for Improved Follow-Up: Comparing the Use Case of Hemoglobinopathy Traits Across U.S. States. Int J Neonatal Screen. 2025 May 20;11(2):40. doi: 10.3390/ijns11020040. PMID: 40407523; PMCID: PMC12101280. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40407523
Data Science collaborations:
Boomer Olsen has been hanging out with us for a while now, and the first manuscript resulting from that is out now. Boomer is currently a resident in Internal Medicine, but underneath that doctorly exterior is a data scientist and informatician.
Olsen BB, Tristani-Firouzi M, Eilbeck K, Yandell M, Hernandez EJ. Quantifying lifetime risk for 1,401 infectious diseases across the diabetes spectrum using a Bayesian approach. BMC Med. 2026 Feb 7. doi: 10.1186/s12916-026-04685-3. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41654821. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41654821
Seonggyun Han continues to publish his doctoral analyses and we are excited to follow his career:
Han S, DiBlasi E, Monson ET, Shabalin AA, Baird L, Chen D, Lamichhane D, Tharp D, Ferris E, Yu Z, Brandon Callor W, Staley MJ, Li QS, Willour V, Crockett DK, Eilbeck K, Bakian AV, Keeshin BR, Okifuji A, Coon H, Docherty AR. Genetic risk of chronic pain conditions associated with risk of suicide death through an integrative analysis of EHR and genomics data. Transl Psychiatry. 2026 Feb 16. doi: 10.1038/s41398-026-03861-6. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41698884. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41698884/
Pathogen Sequence Metadata: Evan and Ashley presented their studies on pathogen sequence metadata at the DELPHI symposium in November. This work was sponsored by the CDC and the APHL.
Other notable efforts:
Evan, Courtney, and Lulu helped author a poster for the MEDinfo conference in Taipei about their experiences with IPHIE: Christensen E, Gauchel C, Valdez L, Rayguru C, Sholokhova K, Upadhyay U, Dewi SRK, Aigner M, Phariss M, Holleboom M, Groenevelt C, Eilbeck K, Abdul SS. Student Perspectives from the International Partnership for Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) 2024 Master Class. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2025 Aug 7;329:2038-2039. doi: 10.3233/SHTI251338. PMID: 40776355.
It is not all work, we also took time to look at the sky and see the northern lights:
