INFORMS 2015 Healthcare Conference highlights growing importance of analytics in healthcare

Sixth grader with diabetes experiment joins PhD’s at poster session

NASHVILLE, TN, July 10, 2015 – The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®), the leading international association for professionals in analytics and operations research, is hosting its third Healthcare Conference with a far-reaching series of presentations about the growing importance of analytics in healthcare. INFORMS Healthcare 2015 takes place July 29-31 at the Omni Nashville Hotel. It will feature 450 talks that span academia and business, helping decision makers better understand the value of analytics as a competitive driver in healthcare.

The conference will include plenary presentations by two leaders in the intersection of analytics and healthcare.

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, President, Clinical Services and Chief Medical Officer, Hospital Corporation of America, will address how payers and providers are increasingly using data for higher-value, safer, and better performing healthcare in a talk, “The Healthcare Information Ecosystem and Improvement: The (Big) Data Dividend of Meaningful Use.” Dr. Perlin provides leadership for clinical services and improving performance at HCA’s 162 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient centers and physician practices.  HCA, with headquarters in Nashville, is the largest private-sector health system in the U.S.

Dr. Kris Joshi, Executive Vice President Products at Emdeon, will speak about “Consumer Driven Healthcare and the Role of an Intelligent Network.” Emdeon is the largest healthcare network in the U.S., connecting payers, providers, pharmacies, and labs, carrying over $1.2 trillion worth of healthcare claims every year, and serving more than 200 million unique individuals each year.  

Among the conference highlight talks are:

• Social media and healthcare: Sessions about
  • examining online word-of-mouth and its effect on consumer demand for services
  • forecasting patient satisfaction from comments on hospital social media pages
  • predicting medical board sanctions from online reviews
• Business of healthcare: A panel, “Utilizing Analytics to Drive Operational and Financial Decision Making in Healthcare,” with experts in healthcare analytics from Vanderbilt University, HCA, Perception Health, NaviHealth, and WPC Healthcare
• Weight loss:
  • A new app for eating healthy
  • A model relating behavior change and weight loss
• Data mining & Twitter: Learning about flu activity by examining Twitter stats

Representatives of the Vanderbilt Center for Surgical Quality and Outcome Research; Vanderbilt Anesthesiology & Perioperative Informatics Research Division; Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Department of Biomedical Informatics; and Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Department of Health Policy will present papers.

The conference will also feature a special guest: 

Sixth grader Sean Berkan Subasi of Cocoa Beach, Florida will present a poster on his experiment examining the use of an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes. Sean conducted three types of experiments to evaluate the performance of a model he developed to test artificial pancreatic devices. Sean became interested in diabetes because several of his grade school classmates are diabetic. His parents are Prof. Ersoy Surbasi of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who will attend the conference, and Prof. Munevver Mine Subasi of the Florida Institute of Technology.

The chairs of INFORMS Healthcare 2015 are M. Eric Johnson (INFORMS’ former Vice President of Publications) and Robert Dittus of Vanderbilt University.

Additional information is at http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/healthcare2015/.

Contact at INFORMS Conference in Nashville: Jeff Cohen, INFORMS Director of Public Affairs and Marketing, 443-228-6488, [email protected].

About INFORMS

INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in analytics and operations research (O.R.). INFORMS advances research, and develops and promotes best practices in analytics and O.R. through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and professional development. INFORMS helps business, government, and other organization professionals make better decisions to drive value to their organizations and society. Our certification program (CAP®), highly cited publications, educational meetings and conferences, continuing education, industry and process-focused networking communities, competitions, and recognition provide professionals with the knowledge and connections they need to achieve ever greater value for their organizations. Further information about INFORMS, analytics, and operations research is at www.informs.org or @informs.

###