Analytics ready for challenge

Seven years ago, the National Academy of Engineering named 14 “Engineering Grand Challenges” facing humanity, including complex yet critical goals such as engineering better medicines, making solar energy cost-competitive and securing cyberspace. Earlier this year, a team comprised of many prominent members of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS, publishers of Analytics magazine) submitted a report to the National Science Foundation outlining how operations research (O.R.) and high-end analytics could play the role of catalyst – utilizing its ideas and tools – to transcend disciplinary boundaries and help address many of the grand challenges.

Although we’ve been chronicling the accomplishments of O.R. and high-end analytics for many years, we never cease to be amazed by the widespread, positive impact of O.R. and analytics on all manner of important problems, from finance and fraud detection to healthcare and horticulture (witness Syngenta, the winner of the coveted 2015 Edelman Award from INFORMS).

This issue of Analytics magazine is another case in point, spotlighting the positive power of healthcare analytics and networks analytics to tackle big problems.

For example, in his article, “Curing what ails the healthcare industry,” Charlie Bitzis focuses on the health insurance industry and how analytics is driving change. In their article, “Predicting patient experience,” Sagar Anisingaraju and Mo Kaushal examine why “narrative data” is a healthcare goldmine and why patients-consumers should feel confident about the “consumerization” wave. Meanwhile, resident “Healthcare Analytics” columnist Rajib Ghosh provides a mid-year status report on his favorite subject.

Network analytics is also the focus of multiple articles. “Networks vs. fraud: connecting the dots,” authored by Bart Baesens, Véronique Van Vlasselaer and Wouter Verbeke, outlines how analytical models are thwarting fraudsters and their complex but revealing patterns of behavior; while “Network analytics for everyone” author Will Towler uses the example of world trade to illustrate how more and diverse fields are turning to network science for greater insight.

First but not least, Scott Zoldi, vice president of Analytic Science at FICO, kicks off the feature articles with his article on “Building human curiosity into A.I.,” which explores neuro-dynamic programming, self-learning models and smart machines that can think ahead.