Week 1 - Introduction to Marketing Analytics and the Role of
Data Analysts
Introduction
Please read and analyze the
Carolinas Healthcare Systems: Consumer Analytics
case using the discussion questions below. For each discussion session I have provided some questions to reflect on as a starting point for your analysis and discussion. Keep in mind that contributions during both online and/or on campus discussions are intended to be interactive, so in addition to sharing independent comments, be sure to read/listen the contributions from your classmates and respond to them by:
building on what they have said
respectfully challenging their comments
offering an alternative perspective NOTICE:
Discussing cases in
small study groups
, and then in the plenary asynchronous discussion, helps students practice the meta-skill of collaborating with others. Students are invited to discuss each assigned case
in their small study group before contributing to the asynchronous online discussion.
Description
In 2014, Dr. Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research and head of the Dickson Advanced Analytics (DA2) group at Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), successfully unified all analytics talent and resources into one group over a three year period. Rapid increases in computing power and decreases in data storage costs had enabled DA2's data architects to build predictive models incorporating complex clinical, financial, demographic, and claims data that would have been impossible to create only a few years before. However, in 2014, both Apple and Google announced features in their new mobile operating systems that collected and
displayed output from various health-wearables (like heart-rate monitors or step-counters), as well as electronic medical record (EMR) data. Their expertise in analytics, access to demographic and location data, as well as large consumer bases, led Dulin to consider which players consumers would trust to integrate their healthcare data in the future and what role DA2 could play.
Discussion Questions
1. Why has CHS invested in DA?
2. How successfully has DA been so far? Why?
3. What are Dulin’s most important challenges going forward?
