Nearly 20 years ago, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that Amazon intended to sell books at or near cost as a way of gathering data on affluent, educated shoppers, as reported by George Packer in The New Yorker. The implication: The data, once analyzed, had more value than the loss-leader books, which proved absolutely correct when Amazon began selling everything under the sun to well-targeted consumers.
Increasing popularity and access to the Internet has changed the way marketers are interacting with customers. These customers are smart, well informed and empowered, as Internet connectivity is available to them at their fingertips and on the go. It has therefore become imperative for organizations to be on the customers’ online radar with respect to new products or services and to be able to influence their choices.
Given my love of books, it is perhaps not surprising that Amazon.com – where, thanks to the digital technologies of today, a plethora of books can immediately be found about nearly any idea that pops into my head and be delivered (free with Amazon Prime membership!) to my doorstep with remarkable speed – is a website that I love deeply.
2014 is turning out to be an interesting year for the healthcare industry. On the healthcare technology front, this year has spurred 16 acquisitions since Jan. 1. State and federal government health insurance exchanges finally started to operate at scale, offering affordable health insurance coverage to millions.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of analytics, operations research (O.R.) and management science and the publishers of Analytics magazine, announced that its Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) exam will now be given at hundreds of computer-based testing centers worldwide through an agreement with Kryterion, the full-service provider of customizable assessment and certification products and services.
Magic shows are fun because we get to experience the impossible. Still, we know there’s trickery afoot. But what about those times when the magic isn’t magic? When we witness something that’s seemingly impossible but proves all too real? Not only real, but the result of optimization?
Tony Bennett sang that he “left his heart in San Francisco” – and at the 2014 INFORMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, you will begin to understand why as you take advantage of the opportunity to fill both your heart and your mind. To fill your mind, you can attend special presentations:
Few things make me more conflicted than parking lots. On a personal level, I loathe the whole parking activity. It brings out what I think is the worst behaviors of humankind: hoarding, brinksmanship, scarcity mentality, irrational objective functions… and now you see why as an O.R. professional I love parking lots: because they are so interesting to study.
A frog is looking to catch his next meal just as a fly wanders into his pond. The frog jumps randomly from one lily pad to the next in hopes of catching the fly. The fly is unaware of the frog and is moving randomly from one red flower to another.
In the last few articles I tried to put the spotlight on new developments in healthcare around the world. As we are getting closer to the end of 2019, I am energized to see positive movements in the healthcare analytics and health information technology space continuing worldwide. Let’s look at what is happening at home first.
