In his executive edge column in this issue of Analytics, Mike Neal, CEO of DecisionNext, poses an interesting question: “Have we grown too dependent on technology, specifically automation that makes important decisions for us?”
Are you marketing to the right customer? Is your product priced correctly? Have you found a more preemptive way to detect fraud? Everywhere you turn, data and analytics sit at the heart of answering such common but still vexing problems.
Machine learning was a hot topic at the recent INFORMS Business Analytics and Operations Research Conference in Orlando, Fla. Everyone seemed to be talking about sophisticated automated technologies for combing through mountains of data, making predictions, discovering insights and optimizing decisions. In his keynote presentation, Sam Eldersveld described robots that had been introduced by Amazon in its distribution centers, drawing parallels between its control systems and other machine-learning applications. Illustrating these points with video footage, Eldersveld wryly observed that “this is kinda creepy.”
The Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) organizes the largest health information technology conference in North America every year. This year’s event, held in Las Vegas, attracted about 42,000 attendees from around the world. About 1,300 health IT exhibitors showcased their products and services, and more than 300 education programs were presented. I attended this event to get a glimpse of the industry with a focus on healthcare analytics. It was encouraging to hear success stories in health analytics around the country.
For many individuals who have earned their CAP® certification, it’s time to renew in order to avoid possibly having to retake the exam. Renewal is less hassle, it costs less and it saves wear and tear on your nerves.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) named UPS as the winner of the 2016 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Science at an Oscar-like gala held in Orlando, Fla., in conjunction with the INFORMS Conference on Analytics & Operations Research. The award, considered the “Super Bowl of Operations Research,” honored UPS’s On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation (ORION) project that demonstrated how operations research (O.R.) can be used to realize hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings.
The 2016 INFORMS International Conference will take place on June 12-15 at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort on the Kohala Coast in Waikoloa, Hawaii. The invited tracks will span the full range of emerging topics from global supply chains to social networks, and all aspects in between. The informative program is designed to educate attendees on current advances that are at the cutting edge of the field anywhere in the world. Through a series of diverse speakers, panels, tutorials and structured networking, the conference will offer attendees a forum for rich intellectual exchange on a broad range of OR/MS applications.
This time, I’m going to take a look at a subject in current events – the proposed construction of an anti-immigration wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. If you have read this column a few times, you know that it’s all about analysis, and seamlessly moves from the frivolous, such as popular television and movies, to the very serious, such as vaccinations and welfare policy. While analysis is the focus, the requirements on both data and rigor are much higher when you are working on current events.
As the head of analytics for a cell phone company, you have been asked to optimize the location of cell towers in a new area where your company wants to provide service. The new area is made up of several neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is represented by a black house icon in the accompanying image (Figure 1)
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.
