Educational Technology & Innovation Team Hosts Medical Education Ideathon
Inaugural Online AI Community of Practice Meeting
Claims Optimization at Yale Health: A Leap Towards Efficiency and Innovation
Reminder: Yale Adopts DocuSign for E-Signatures
Reminder: Enhancing Mail Security at Yale
Securing Your Virtual Meetings: Zoom Best Practices
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION TEAM HOSTS MEDICAL EDUCATION IDEATHON: The Educational Technology & Innovation (ETI) team at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) hosted its inaugural Ideathon on March 28, 2025, bringing together over 40 participants from across the YSM community to tackle pressing challenges in medical education through technology and innovation. Held in the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library’s team-based learning classroom, the event invited registrants to propose design challenges, seven of which—including topics like AI-simulated patients and augmented reality anatomy—were selected for collaborative exploration. ETI led the day’s activities with structured brainstorming techniques, such as “brainwriting” and persona development, and introduced participants to human-centered design principles. The event reflected ETI’s mission to harness technology and data-driven insights to support excellence in medical education through innovative, collaborative solutions.
One of the event’s most promising ideas, “Fast Formative Feedback,” addressed the challenge of delivering efficient, personalized clinical feedback. The proposed solution, developed by a team including Ada Fenick, MD, and presented by Michael Makutonin, MD, and Lisa Zhang, MD, would use AI to synthesize individualized feedback from clinical case presentations via an API layered onto Abridge’s transcription tool. This project exemplifies the Ideathon’s impact—transforming challenges into actionable ideas with real potential for advancement. As ETI Co-Chair Kathleen Omollo, PMP, noted, “The Ideathon succeeded in surfacing community needs, sparking creativity, and planting seeds for future innovation, all while creating a fun and engaging space for interdisciplinary collaboration.”
INAUGURAL ONLINE AI COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE MEETING: On April 2, the One IT community held its inaugural online AI Community of Practice meeting. Organized by the AI Literacy team in support of the Balanced Scorecard initiative (BSC-02), the event aimed to foster AI literacy and build connections. 261 participants attended the event.
Keynote Speaker: Connie Steel, Program Manager, AI Initiatives
Lightning Talks:
Prompt Responsibly – Jeremy Rosenberg, Assistant Vice President, IT & CISO
Clarity: Your Secure AI Companion – Anne Pederson, Business Systems Analyst
Enriching Cultural Heritage with AI – Rob Sanderson, Senior Director for Digital Cultural Heritage
The hour-long event launched a monthly show-and-tell series, scheduled for the first Wednesday of each month starting in May. Future events will showcase how One IT community members integrate AI into their work in 30-minute sessions, followed by 15-minute group discussions, fostering learning and connections within One IT.
CLAIMS OPTIMIZATION AT YALE HEALTH: A LEAP TOWARD EFFICIENCY AND INNOVATION: In November 2023, Health Sciences IT launched the Yale Health Claims Optimization Project to shift from a paper-based process to an electronic system. At the start, only 65% of 665,000+ annual claims were electronic, leaving around 235,000 paper claims. Processing paper claims is cumbersome and can delay remittances to vendors. Through this effort, the team began converting vendors to an electronic data interchange (EDI) claims processing. So far, the Yale Health Claims Optimization Project has increased electronic claims processing from 65% to 85% and reduced paper claims to fewer than 100 annually. In parallel, the Yale Health team is reengineering their overall claims process to further alleviate the burden of paper-based submissions. Most electronic claims are auto-adjudicated and will soon implement a robust internal system for auditing and verifying processed claims, supported by increased automation and optimized workflows.
Benefits for Yale Health
Faster processing times
Reduced manual workload
Fewer delays in vendor remittances
Improved data accuracy
The project showcases Health Sciences IT’s focus on driving innovation and strengthening operational performance. More than just reducing paper, this initiative is about transforming the way Yale Health manages claims - making the process faster, smarter, and more responsive. Stay tuned as we continue to make strides toward 100% electronic claims—and beyond.
REMINDER: YALE ADOPTS DOCUSIGN FOR E-SIGNATURES: Yale has chosen DocuSign as the preferred e-signature tool, offering better security, tracking, and legal validity.
DocuSign will replace Adobe Sign (not Adobe Acrobat) and will be supported by ITS. You can use Adobe Sign until June 30, 2025, but remember to download and save your old documents before then.
This change only affects e-signatures requested through Adobe Sign or Adobe Acrobat Request Signature tool, not digital signatures in Adobe Acrobat.
For questions or to request DocuSign for your workflow, submit a request through the ServiceNow portal.
REMINDER: ENHANCING MAIL SECURITY AT YALE: To improve mail security, reduce spam, and ensure consistent delivery of bulk emails from the @Yale.edu domain, Yale ITS has partnered with Valimail, a Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Compliance (DMARC) tool. Starting Tuesday, April 15, 2025, this tool will prevent unauthorized bulk email services from delivering emails to recipients' inboxes. Instead, such emails may be redirected to the recipient’s spam or junk folder or blocked from delivery entirely.
SECURING YOUR VIRTUAL MEETINGS: ZOOM BEST PRACTICES: In today's digital age, the security of your virtual meetings is crucial. Protecting data and ensuring the safety of you, your online guests, and the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) community is our top priority. While Yale IT has implemented automatic security measures for Zoom, everyone plays a role in following best practices when conducting virtual meetings.
Welcome New Team Members
Valdino Arduini, Project Manager – Research Systems
Jung (Ray) Ryoul Choi, Systems Engineer (HPC, AWS) – Research Systems
Omer Makhdoom, Systems Engineer – Research Systems
Ye Xu, PhD, Business Systems Analyst – Education Technology & Innovation
