Big Data Opportunities in Healthcare

For our May Data Science DC Meetup, we are excited to interact with the Health Datapalooza (http://healthdatapalooza.org/)! Aman Bhandari and Susan Bennett from Merck will join us to talk about big data opportunities in healthcare and the forces driving the creation of a new health data economy.

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Agenda:

• 6:30pm -- Networking, Empanadas, and Refreshments

• 7:00pm -- Introduction, Announcements

• 7:15pm -- Presentation and Discussion

• 8:30pm -- Data Drinks (Tonic , 2036 G St NW)

Abstract:

What do an oil well, a terrorist and a heart have in common?

We live in a world where competitive or superior management of costs and risks is often the difference between profitability & bankruptcy, or between life & death. What does that mean for “smart data" applications? Big Data contains noise and associated liabilities. We need “Smart Data” - filtering out the noise and holding onto valuable components and their interrelationships.

We must also produce best practices that move us from merely identifying correlation to revealing meaningful causation. We need to leverage new data capabilities that hold a promise of improving speed, precision or accuracy, such as deep learning, semantic technologies, etc., which are themselves emerging technologies. In this session we will explore 3 case studies, their successful outcomes and in layman’s terms – a unique approach to producing "Smart Data" that holds a promise of better managing complex systems.

Bios:

Aman Bhandari

Aman is currently at Merck where he is building data science capabilities across the world. Prior to Merck, he worked on President Obama’s tech team at the White House, where he was responsible for health data and health IT initiatives and was on the core team that implemented the President’s open data and innovation initiatives. Aman has worked extensively across corporate, academic and government settings and has advised data, tech and innovation initiatives from the World Bank, Harvard, Cornell, Ashoka Foundation, Knight News Foundation, SXSW and others. He holds a master’s degree in epidemiology and a doctorate in health systems research.

Susan Bennett

Susan's 20 years of business experience and executive management include practices in engineering, product development, sales & marketing within the oil & gas, telecommunications, agriculture and life science-healthcare industries. Having recently started to work for Merck, she is a member of an innovation team that leads a facet of the information technology strategic planning. Her commitment includes defining critical business questions and translating them into an analytics agenda. Prior to Merck, in December 2008 Susan co-founded CrossInnovation, LLC and was subsequently acquired by Accelerated Vision Group, LLC in March 2013. At those organizations, she led a talented team that successfully implemented a cognitive computing platform emanating from the US Intelligence community to solve business problems in retail, oil & gas and healthcare. Susan earned a B.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada. She relocated to Overland Park, Kansas in 2002 when another start-up she was working for was acquired by Marconi (now Ericsson). She volunteers with Reaching Out From Within (ROFW), a non-profit that supports prisoner-led self-transformation.

Sponsors:

This event is sponsored by the George Washington Business School MS in Business Analytics Program (http://business.gwu.edu/programs/specialized-masters/m-s-in-business-analytics/academic-program/), Statistics.com (http://bit.ly/12YljkP), Elder Research (http://datamininglab.com/), Booz Allen Hamilton (https://www.boozallen.com/consulting/strategic-innovation/nextgen-analytics-data-science), AOL (http://engineering.aol.com/), and Data Society (http://datasociety.co/kickstarter). (Would your organization like to sponsor too? Please get in touch!)