4/28/17
Final Presentation Link
As the final week winds down of the senior project, I have begun to recap what I have learned over the past ten weeks.
Big Data is a powerful new way to handle information that will lead the future of technology and analytics. I truly believe we can do great things by processing larger and larger amounts of data, whether we begin to run models of the universe or simple human populations.
Hopefully this final presentation will shed some light on what I have discovered over the past 2 months. Thank you for reading!
Friday, April 28, 2017
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Final Thoughts
04/27/17
My time at Dignity Health has taught me the values of working within a team environment in the context of developing applications to big data. I have discovered what creative ways code and big data are being applied to handle hospital data and augment what the doctors would traditionally do on their own. Whether it be creating an alert system for sepsis, creating a genomics database, or just making an application that rates doctors based on their length of stay, technology has clearly revolutionized the way we handle healthcare.
Now, we can create large scale monitoring systems, systems to monitor those systems and so on. It all becomes increasingly complex as time goes on, but so does it in effectiveness of treating patients. Never before has a computer been able to take the load off of a doctor in terms of doing calculations or constantly monitoring different levels or values. It is truly a revolutionary feat. I have a newfound interest in what we can do with large-scale data collection, whether it be for medicine or simple consumer understanding in a more business focused scenario.
This project has given me a new mindset as to what I want to do in the future, I enjoyed working in healthcare more than I had anticipated, but it also reminded me why I wanted to work in something more consumer-facing. I enjoy creating things people will use, perfecting them for usability by your average person, whether it be hardware or software.
My time at Dignity Health has taught me the values of working within a team environment in the context of developing applications to big data. I have discovered what creative ways code and big data are being applied to handle hospital data and augment what the doctors would traditionally do on their own. Whether it be creating an alert system for sepsis, creating a genomics database, or just making an application that rates doctors based on their length of stay, technology has clearly revolutionized the way we handle healthcare.
Now, we can create large scale monitoring systems, systems to monitor those systems and so on. It all becomes increasingly complex as time goes on, but so does it in effectiveness of treating patients. Never before has a computer been able to take the load off of a doctor in terms of doing calculations or constantly monitoring different levels or values. It is truly a revolutionary feat. I have a newfound interest in what we can do with large-scale data collection, whether it be for medicine or simple consumer understanding in a more business focused scenario.
This project has given me a new mindset as to what I want to do in the future, I enjoyed working in healthcare more than I had anticipated, but it also reminded me why I wanted to work in something more consumer-facing. I enjoy creating things people will use, perfecting them for usability by your average person, whether it be hardware or software.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Twitter Application Demo
04/23/17
Here is a demo of my Twitter data collection application that I have created and built over the time at my internship.
Image 1:
The code and program itself. (error was caused by killing the program just before capturing the image)
Image 2: I added a pop-up window to allow you to type in keywords, even multiple if they are separated by commas.
Image 5: It then writes to the CSV file I designated in the code
This is how I have gathered data to be analyzed through sentiment analysis to understand overall opinion towards a certain topic. Images in this post feature part of my collection of data for the term "healthcare".
Here is a demo of my Twitter data collection application that I have created and built over the time at my internship.
Image 1:
The code and program itself. (error was caused by killing the program just before capturing the image)
Image 2: I added a pop-up window to allow you to type in keywords, even multiple if they are separated by commas.
Image 3: Input the time to run.
Image 4: It begins to read the Twitter feed and then output it to the console below in Eclipse.
Image 5: It then writes to the CSV file I designated in the code
This is how I have gathered data to be analyzed through sentiment analysis to understand overall opinion towards a certain topic. Images in this post feature part of my collection of data for the term "healthcare".
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Twitter Analytics UPDATE
04/22/17
As I have progressed with many different projects over the past month, one that fell a bit by the wayside was my Twitter analytics program. Now, I have begun to kick it into high gear removing as many bugs as I can and essentially creating a working prototype of what we can do with twitter tracking. I can read the Twitter feed and write ALL the data to a .csv file which I can then import into an external program in SAS that can provide word clouds and the same sentiment analysis I was aiming to get through Google. I am attempting to secure a Google cloud account as to implement their sentiment analysis into the program itself to make it all seamless, but I am not able to do it at my internship due to their restrictions on personal account use. At the moment, I am refining it to make sure I can produce the results that can highlight the power of sentiment analysis on social media. I will be able to include some of my results in my final presentation, if anything using the SAS visual analytics tool to create some visual word clouds and present the sentiment analysis.
I am proud of what I was able to do and hopefully I can create a demo in a future post.
As I have progressed with many different projects over the past month, one that fell a bit by the wayside was my Twitter analytics program. Now, I have begun to kick it into high gear removing as many bugs as I can and essentially creating a working prototype of what we can do with twitter tracking. I can read the Twitter feed and write ALL the data to a .csv file which I can then import into an external program in SAS that can provide word clouds and the same sentiment analysis I was aiming to get through Google. I am attempting to secure a Google cloud account as to implement their sentiment analysis into the program itself to make it all seamless, but I am not able to do it at my internship due to their restrictions on personal account use. At the moment, I am refining it to make sure I can produce the results that can highlight the power of sentiment analysis on social media. I will be able to include some of my results in my final presentation, if anything using the SAS visual analytics tool to create some visual word clouds and present the sentiment analysis.
I am proud of what I was able to do and hopefully I can create a demo in a future post.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Drug Price/Efficiency Dashboard
04/16/17
Hey Everyone,
This week I was introduced to a new project Dignity is working on that ties directly into what I had been doing with the prescription drug prices project. Essentially they are developing a system that can log and compare drugs based on their price and efficiency to the final patient as a means of making sure we are using the best value drugs, a balance of cost and quality.
I have largely been working on the actual design of the web application and making sure everything is functional, rather than developing the internal system as the groundwork is largely laid for that aspect. It is another instance of how they are gathering all the data surrounding outcomes of certain drugs and comparing it to the costs of each, exactly in line with what I had been researching in my previous efforts to ensure we were receiving the best prices compared to local pharmacies.
I wanted to share this with you as I am excited to continue my work with big data, thank you!
Hey Everyone,
This week I was introduced to a new project Dignity is working on that ties directly into what I had been doing with the prescription drug prices project. Essentially they are developing a system that can log and compare drugs based on their price and efficiency to the final patient as a means of making sure we are using the best value drugs, a balance of cost and quality.
I have largely been working on the actual design of the web application and making sure everything is functional, rather than developing the internal system as the groundwork is largely laid for that aspect. It is another instance of how they are gathering all the data surrounding outcomes of certain drugs and comparing it to the costs of each, exactly in line with what I had been researching in my previous efforts to ensure we were receiving the best prices compared to local pharmacies.
I wanted to share this with you as I am excited to continue my work with big data, thank you!
Saturday, April 15, 2017
IceScrum
04/15/17
In my previous post, I discussed many of the issues and complications that come with working in teams to create an application that may not even fit the end user's needs. It is a huge problem in any environment where the developers are not the people who will be using the application (which is nearly all development environments).
This week they began to roll out a new tool called "Icescrum". It is a form of scrum management that essentially provides a new way to organize the creation of an application.
Essentially, it begins with "user stories" that are requests or "stories" straight from the people who will be using the application, detailing what they want and how they will use it. These are directly correlated into features, assuming they are accepted by the project manager, and can then be handled individually by different people. While very simple, it provides a clear-cut bridge between the users and the developers of a product. So far, it has proved to make things much simpler for everyone and has streamlined the whole process.
In my previous post, I discussed many of the issues and complications that come with working in teams to create an application that may not even fit the end user's needs. It is a huge problem in any environment where the developers are not the people who will be using the application (which is nearly all development environments).
This week they began to roll out a new tool called "Icescrum". It is a form of scrum management that essentially provides a new way to organize the creation of an application.
Essentially, it begins with "user stories" that are requests or "stories" straight from the people who will be using the application, detailing what they want and how they will use it. These are directly correlated into features, assuming they are accepted by the project manager, and can then be handled individually by different people. While very simple, it provides a clear-cut bridge between the users and the developers of a product. So far, it has proved to make things much simpler for everyone and has streamlined the whole process.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Designing Applications
04/09/17
Big data is a field that is truly exploding in recent years. It has become a bit of a buzzword in the media but it is truly making huge strides in the way we can track and model population-sized data. Dignity Health uses big data to help medical caregivers every day with alert systems, predictive models, and tracking systems for the physicians. It allows them to monitor different parts of the patient's status and alert the physician when they would otherwise not be able to personally monitor them given the large volume of patients in a hospital.
Working with big data applications was something that was a bit of a shock for me; I imagined a timeline for a typical project, even a large one, was on the order of weeks or maybe a few months, but the systems they design can take years to implement. This itself naturally lends to less mobility in larger corporations, as I have observed, but gives me a true appreciation of what goes into these projects that may only have a few core components. When designing a system to handle this much data, they have several different stages and iterations that the product will go through, adding or removing aspects at the request of the end user. It must have very low tolerances for error, especially when this data is in some cases patient's personal data. However, large systems becoming long arduous tasks to create, with a lack of strong direction, constantly changing as there is little way for the end user of the program to essentially draw out the functionality of the application or product. If they were to draw out or prototype what exactly what they want, it would take too long for them or they would essentially create it themselves.
I see improvement possibilities in the way large and small projects are managed in the enterprise. Now, I may not have a full picture but it does seem there is room for improvement in the way our end users communicate what they want out of an application, as opposed to roughly describing it in an email. Dignity Health has been experimenting with prototyping tools and new ways to organize a team under the banner of organizing requests from users so they do not have to revise the product repeatedly because what they initially produce does not exactly match what the user imagined. This should help shorten timelines for projects but also allow for increased mobility as they can spend the time working on new initiatives or actually reworking the applications, rather than remaking them due to not meeting the initial image of the end user.
Big data is a field that is truly exploding in recent years. It has become a bit of a buzzword in the media but it is truly making huge strides in the way we can track and model population-sized data. Dignity Health uses big data to help medical caregivers every day with alert systems, predictive models, and tracking systems for the physicians. It allows them to monitor different parts of the patient's status and alert the physician when they would otherwise not be able to personally monitor them given the large volume of patients in a hospital.
Working with big data applications was something that was a bit of a shock for me; I imagined a timeline for a typical project, even a large one, was on the order of weeks or maybe a few months, but the systems they design can take years to implement. This itself naturally lends to less mobility in larger corporations, as I have observed, but gives me a true appreciation of what goes into these projects that may only have a few core components. When designing a system to handle this much data, they have several different stages and iterations that the product will go through, adding or removing aspects at the request of the end user. It must have very low tolerances for error, especially when this data is in some cases patient's personal data. However, large systems becoming long arduous tasks to create, with a lack of strong direction, constantly changing as there is little way for the end user of the program to essentially draw out the functionality of the application or product. If they were to draw out or prototype what exactly what they want, it would take too long for them or they would essentially create it themselves.
I see improvement possibilities in the way large and small projects are managed in the enterprise. Now, I may not have a full picture but it does seem there is room for improvement in the way our end users communicate what they want out of an application, as opposed to roughly describing it in an email. Dignity Health has been experimenting with prototyping tools and new ways to organize a team under the banner of organizing requests from users so they do not have to revise the product repeatedly because what they initially produce does not exactly match what the user imagined. This should help shorten timelines for projects but also allow for increased mobility as they can spend the time working on new initiatives or actually reworking the applications, rather than remaking them due to not meeting the initial image of the end user.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Big Data in My Future
04/08/17
Hey Everyone,
As I enter the month of April, college has become a reality for me, choosing where to go and discovering who I want to be. My time at Dignity has really given me a glimpse into the world of big data and developing large systems for use in an environment like healthcare, and I am loving it.
I hope to study computer science at whichever institution I call home for the next four years, and I know that I could apply this to a future in big data. It has already grown its way into companies and infrastructures across the world, but I know the opportunities our endless with this way of managing information in the digital age. I think it could easily revolutionize every aspect of our daily lives, from the healthcare changes I see at dignity, to the extent we understand ourselves.
To me, big data is a door into a realm of analytics that will pave the future to understanding our world. I could easily see myself diving deeper into big data as I go through college or even after for my career. It is amazing that I discovered something I am truly passionate about, in my internship I can easily see how big data is improving the ways that patients are cared for and how physicians operate.
I may not be tied to the idea of developing big data for healthcare, but I can see possibilities for the application in nearly every scenario to improve our understanding and efficiency.
Hey Everyone,
As I enter the month of April, college has become a reality for me, choosing where to go and discovering who I want to be. My time at Dignity has really given me a glimpse into the world of big data and developing large systems for use in an environment like healthcare, and I am loving it.
I hope to study computer science at whichever institution I call home for the next four years, and I know that I could apply this to a future in big data. It has already grown its way into companies and infrastructures across the world, but I know the opportunities our endless with this way of managing information in the digital age. I think it could easily revolutionize every aspect of our daily lives, from the healthcare changes I see at dignity, to the extent we understand ourselves.
To me, big data is a door into a realm of analytics that will pave the future to understanding our world. I could easily see myself diving deeper into big data as I go through college or even after for my career. It is amazing that I discovered something I am truly passionate about, in my internship I can easily see how big data is improving the ways that patients are cared for and how physicians operate.
I may not be tied to the idea of developing big data for healthcare, but I can see possibilities for the application in nearly every scenario to improve our understanding and efficiency.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Sepsis Alert Application
03/26/17
As I discussed in my previous blog post, sepsis is a huge point of concern for Dignity Health and anything they can do to reduce the damage of sepsis is important to them.
It is for this reason that they have begun several different projects to monitor and predict the occurrence of sepsis to hopefully stop or lessen the damage of the complication.
Currently, they have created an alert system that monitors each step of the sepsis treatment process and puts it on a timer to ensure it is all done within the time constraints set for the specific task in the process of treating sepsis. Each step is marked by a digital light that is illuminated green as completed, yellow as in progress, or red as needing to be done. This is an easy visual to guide physicians as they deal with many many patients, as well as a means for the backend systems to remind doctors that certain patients may need treatment immediately. Allowing a large server to handle all the current patient data so that it can help physicians manage their time.
As time goes on, they are developing systems that will be able to predict the incidence of sepsis before it has even officially begun. This leverages big data to track all the different cases of sepsis and correlate which combination of factors commonly lead to sepsis, thereby allowing the server to throw an error that a certain patient may be at high risk of sepsis. Yet another example of how we can use big data platforms to process massive amounts of information to accomplish an incredibly important result.
As I discussed in my previous blog post, sepsis is a huge point of concern for Dignity Health and anything they can do to reduce the damage of sepsis is important to them.
It is for this reason that they have begun several different projects to monitor and predict the occurrence of sepsis to hopefully stop or lessen the damage of the complication.
Currently, they have created an alert system that monitors each step of the sepsis treatment process and puts it on a timer to ensure it is all done within the time constraints set for the specific task in the process of treating sepsis. Each step is marked by a digital light that is illuminated green as completed, yellow as in progress, or red as needing to be done. This is an easy visual to guide physicians as they deal with many many patients, as well as a means for the backend systems to remind doctors that certain patients may need treatment immediately. Allowing a large server to handle all the current patient data so that it can help physicians manage their time.
As time goes on, they are developing systems that will be able to predict the incidence of sepsis before it has even officially begun. This leverages big data to track all the different cases of sepsis and correlate which combination of factors commonly lead to sepsis, thereby allowing the server to throw an error that a certain patient may be at high risk of sepsis. Yet another example of how we can use big data platforms to process massive amounts of information to accomplish an incredibly important result.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Sepsis
03/25/17
Today I will be explaining the idea of sepsis, as it is definitely a hot topic in the medical world.
Many of my readers may be wondering what sepsis is, or may have never even heard of it. Essentially it is a general term applied to when the body attempts to fight an infection but ends up damaging itself instead, which is a very prevalent and life threatening condition in the hospital.
Many different things can show sepsis is/has occurred such as: heightened heart rate, fast respiratory rate, or very high body temperature.
It has varying levels of severity ranging from standard sepsis to severe sepsis all the way to septic shock. As a sepsis develops, it can be very dangerous to the patient, largely due to the possibility of blood clots forming which impair blood-flow and cause tissue/organ death.
This is a very serious topic as it is not completely understood which factors exactly can lead to sepsis. Infections are highly commonplace in your average hospital, which is why sepsis is such a big issue at Dignity Health.
Today I will be explaining the idea of sepsis, as it is definitely a hot topic in the medical world.
Many of my readers may be wondering what sepsis is, or may have never even heard of it. Essentially it is a general term applied to when the body attempts to fight an infection but ends up damaging itself instead, which is a very prevalent and life threatening condition in the hospital.
Many different things can show sepsis is/has occurred such as: heightened heart rate, fast respiratory rate, or very high body temperature.
It has varying levels of severity ranging from standard sepsis to severe sepsis all the way to septic shock. As a sepsis develops, it can be very dangerous to the patient, largely due to the possibility of blood clots forming which impair blood-flow and cause tissue/organ death.
This is a very serious topic as it is not completely understood which factors exactly can lead to sepsis. Infections are highly commonplace in your average hospital, which is why sepsis is such a big issue at Dignity Health.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Leadership in the Workplace
03/19/17
During this most recent week, as a break from the coding and collaboration on big data projects, my adviser assigned me to work on modernizing a presentation from several years ago about how to lead effectively. This largely focused on the workplace, but I would like to share it as I believe it is very useful information even outside of that context.
The company strives on working in teams and strong leadership to empower all the members of the company, so this presentation describes the most effective ways to lead.
Presentation
During this most recent week, as a break from the coding and collaboration on big data projects, my adviser assigned me to work on modernizing a presentation from several years ago about how to lead effectively. This largely focused on the workplace, but I would like to share it as I believe it is very useful information even outside of that context.
The company strives on working in teams and strong leadership to empower all the members of the company, so this presentation describes the most effective ways to lead.
Presentation
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Systems Management
03/18/17
This week I was given the task of charting out the overall run-times for a system that the hospital has running every day to discover possibly points where the system could be improved to run quicker. It was very new to me as I was handed a massive excel spreadsheet with start and stop times of many many different processes.
The specific system had to do with gathering different elements of patient data to feed into other systems, pulling records and clinical information.
At first I simply drew out a chart in excel to show the time it took for each process to complete over the time of day when it began. Some trends developed as expected, with most of them being consistent throughout the whole day, however there was a large peak for all applications around 6 am. I was informed this is because the systems go offline for a few hours then have to makeup the missed data when they restart at 6 am. I just then created a bit of a reusable sheet in excel to chart the same run times for any day whose data was inputted into the sheet. I used this to check over several days and noted the specific problem areas and reported it to my adviser.
It felt like I had really been able to help with a real issue and work to improve an application for the hospital. It also gave me an appreciation for what really goes on behind the scenes, thousands and thousands of different small processes that feed into one main objective.
This week I was given the task of charting out the overall run-times for a system that the hospital has running every day to discover possibly points where the system could be improved to run quicker. It was very new to me as I was handed a massive excel spreadsheet with start and stop times of many many different processes.
The specific system had to do with gathering different elements of patient data to feed into other systems, pulling records and clinical information.
At first I simply drew out a chart in excel to show the time it took for each process to complete over the time of day when it began. Some trends developed as expected, with most of them being consistent throughout the whole day, however there was a large peak for all applications around 6 am. I was informed this is because the systems go offline for a few hours then have to makeup the missed data when they restart at 6 am. I just then created a bit of a reusable sheet in excel to chart the same run times for any day whose data was inputted into the sheet. I used this to check over several days and noted the specific problem areas and reported it to my adviser.
It felt like I had really been able to help with a real issue and work to improve an application for the hospital. It also gave me an appreciation for what really goes on behind the scenes, thousands and thousands of different small processes that feed into one main objective.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Genomics Presentation
03/12/17
I have created an extensive powerpoint presentation around the idea of genomics and precision medicine.
It aims to explain genomics in a cursory sense and then explain how we can use big data to improve healthcare with integration of genetic information. This new approach to healthcare is being called "precision medicine" and essentially means that the treatment will be specific to each patient based on their genetic makeup rather than just a generic treatment for each disease. Big data will allow systems to analyze what treatments work best for patients of similar genetic makeup and recommend the best treatment plan for new patients.
Genomics Presentation
This is a work in progress but I will be updating the linked presentation as I make edits to it.
I have created an extensive powerpoint presentation around the idea of genomics and precision medicine.
It aims to explain genomics in a cursory sense and then explain how we can use big data to improve healthcare with integration of genetic information. This new approach to healthcare is being called "precision medicine" and essentially means that the treatment will be specific to each patient based on their genetic makeup rather than just a generic treatment for each disease. Big data will allow systems to analyze what treatments work best for patients of similar genetic makeup and recommend the best treatment plan for new patients.
Genomics Presentation
This is a work in progress but I will be updating the linked presentation as I make edits to it.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Power of Modern Websites
03/11/17
As I have became more and more experienced with angular java, I have begun to understand truly what is possible with modern web development tools.
Dignity Health builds nearly all of their applications online rather than as something they would download to each and every computer. Traditionally this would seem less powerful as websites are generally seen as much more limited than your traditional program on your computer, but in truth, they are now sometimes just as powerful as the downloaded normal programs.
Seeing as Dignity deals a lot with big data and servers, they host most of the processing on their large servers and merely use the web applications as a portal to access the server data or pass it to the system to process rather the individual computers. This is a hallmark of the modern technology and an extension of the idea of the "cloud". Transferring the processing to a server, rather than on a local machine, allows these web applications to be just as powerful while also being mobile and accessible anywhere since it is just a website in its most basic form.
The way they build their systems here really shows me what big data and that ideology can lead to, more versatile and centralized systems that can be accessed from nearly anywhere.
As I have became more and more experienced with angular java, I have begun to understand truly what is possible with modern web development tools.
Dignity Health builds nearly all of their applications online rather than as something they would download to each and every computer. Traditionally this would seem less powerful as websites are generally seen as much more limited than your traditional program on your computer, but in truth, they are now sometimes just as powerful as the downloaded normal programs.
Seeing as Dignity deals a lot with big data and servers, they host most of the processing on their large servers and merely use the web applications as a portal to access the server data or pass it to the system to process rather the individual computers. This is a hallmark of the modern technology and an extension of the idea of the "cloud". Transferring the processing to a server, rather than on a local machine, allows these web applications to be just as powerful while also being mobile and accessible anywhere since it is just a website in its most basic form.
The way they build their systems here really shows me what big data and that ideology can lead to, more versatile and centralized systems that can be accessed from nearly anywhere.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Recap of Week Four
03/04/17
This last week has really been a step towards working hands on with the projects that I am involved in. I was a part of an initial meeting for a project that involves creating a new algorithm for attributing a certain physician with the length of stay of patients. Currently it is the discharging physician at some of their hospitals that has that patients length of stay in the hospital, even though they may have not had much face time with them. The LOS information is useful for grading physicians and noting who is taking longer than usual or who has the quickest turn around for patients, which is compared with if they are readmitted to the hospital. The new algorithm is based on the doctors notes written about the patient, it uses them to attribute who actually tended to that patient with that patients length of stay compared to the old system which was frequently innacurate. It was very exciting to be a part of a project creating a system that is going to be actually piloted and used within the hospitals. I was able to see how they plan and begin to execute different tasks within this organization, all invaluable experience for the future.
In my other main projects, I have progressed with designing a Twitter user interface to have the program more user friendly in the future and hopefully I can implement that as time progresses. The genomics project has mostly consisted of refining my IT guide to genomics that hopefully I will be presenting soon to the department. I also was able to acquire more data in my prescription drug price project in order to make it more usable and concrete for our hospitals. That project is discussed in more depth in this week's other blog post. Thanks again for checking in.
Kyle Grace
Friday, March 3, 2017
Prescription Drug Prices
03/03/17
Hospitals buy drugs in bulk from manufactures and distributors for a wholesale price (buying from costco vs target) which theoretically should be a better price than someone going to a pharmacy since they buy in bulk. This was the main idea of the project I set out on in the area of perscription drug prices. I was given some purchasing data, the different prices and buy orders from some hospitals to compare what we paid vs the retail prices in local pharmacies to see if we really receive a good price. What we pay in the end is paid for by the patient whether by insurance or out of their pocket. I ran this analysis for the highest overall expense drugs (price x quantity) to see where we could have the biggest amount of savings. Overall I found there were plenty of fine prices for some drugs, however others were costing us more than it would cost a patient to buy at the local pharmacy. These were the drugs I cared about and will pass on to the hospital to ensure we are being charged a fair price.
I also received data across all facilities that Dignity Health operates for the highest cost drugs in the last year and I am in the process of analyzing that data as well. In the end, this information could save the company money and battle for better prices for our patients. Thanks for keeping updated with my progress.
Kyle Grace
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Recap of Week Three
02/25/17
Hey everyone,
I have just wrapped up week three at Dignity Health and I have continued to progress on the few projects I am involved with. I also have been working with a few others to learn Angular Java so that we can work on a web based application in the future.
For my drug price tracking project, I have gathered up the highest expense drugs for the hospital (combination of price and quantity purchased) and compared the wholesale prices against those of retailers to ensure we charge a similar price to patients. I also presented some of this information to the chief health information officer and he seemed intrigued to look into this further.
As for the Twitter tracking, I covered most things in my previous post other than having a meeting discussing how we can turn this into a web application that the hospital can use to run analytics on certain keywords.
Finally, the genomics project is progressing as the team works to advance their idea of how we want to integrate the genetic information into the EHRs. I have also completed a laymen's guide to genomics that I will present to the IT department as an introduction to what we will be doing with genomics. I will share that presentation in a future blog post.
Comment if you have any questions about what I am working on, thank you.
Hey everyone,
I have just wrapped up week three at Dignity Health and I have continued to progress on the few projects I am involved with. I also have been working with a few others to learn Angular Java so that we can work on a web based application in the future.
For my drug price tracking project, I have gathered up the highest expense drugs for the hospital (combination of price and quantity purchased) and compared the wholesale prices against those of retailers to ensure we charge a similar price to patients. I also presented some of this information to the chief health information officer and he seemed intrigued to look into this further.
As for the Twitter tracking, I covered most things in my previous post other than having a meeting discussing how we can turn this into a web application that the hospital can use to run analytics on certain keywords.
Finally, the genomics project is progressing as the team works to advance their idea of how we want to integrate the genetic information into the EHRs. I have also completed a laymen's guide to genomics that I will present to the IT department as an introduction to what we will be doing with genomics. I will share that presentation in a future blog post.
Comment if you have any questions about what I am working on, thank you.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Twitter Tracking
2/23/17
Hello Everyone,
I have began to experiment with an early version of the Twitter program mainly using code provided by Twitter to gather tweets associated with a certain keyword or set of keywords. I also added some of my own code just to calculate the total number of tweets, the time the program has been running, and the average tweets per minute over that interval. While testing it during some of my other tasks, I noticed very little buzz surrounding some of the topics I was testing just for my own interests such as "genomics" or "genome" but nearly 2200 tweets per minute when I included the keyword "Trump". It essentially became my test keyword as I knew I would always pull in lots of data to make sure my algorithms work correctly. I will hopefully be adding a user interface as well as the ability for the program to log some of the data. Currently, I have to edit the code to change the codewords and read the console for my information, almost like just browsing the Twitter homepage. It is a good start, but I have lots of work to do, but with the help of some of the experienced individuals at Dignity, I know it will be doable.
Let me know if you have any questions about what I am doing and thanks for reading my blog.
Kyle Grace
Hello Everyone,
I have began to experiment with an early version of the Twitter program mainly using code provided by Twitter to gather tweets associated with a certain keyword or set of keywords. I also added some of my own code just to calculate the total number of tweets, the time the program has been running, and the average tweets per minute over that interval. While testing it during some of my other tasks, I noticed very little buzz surrounding some of the topics I was testing just for my own interests such as "genomics" or "genome" but nearly 2200 tweets per minute when I included the keyword "Trump". It essentially became my test keyword as I knew I would always pull in lots of data to make sure my algorithms work correctly. I will hopefully be adding a user interface as well as the ability for the program to log some of the data. Currently, I have to edit the code to change the codewords and read the console for my information, almost like just browsing the Twitter homepage. It is a good start, but I have lots of work to do, but with the help of some of the experienced individuals at Dignity, I know it will be doable.
Let me know if you have any questions about what I am doing and thanks for reading my blog.
Kyle Grace
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Recap of Week Two
2/19/17
The main focus of my project is Big Data, and I have realized not all of my readers or people in general know what Big Data really is, so I think in this post I will explain it in the context of my second week.
The main focus of my project is Big Data, and I have realized not all of my readers or people in general know what Big Data really is, so I think in this post I will explain it in the context of my second week.
Big Data is essentially just a large amount of information that we can store electronically now using the latest technology. This is data stored about an insane number of individuals or a very high number of data points surrounding a certain topic. In my field this is going to be genomes and their attached clinical data, tweets and the sentiment of their contents, as well as the different drug purchase transactions for the hospitals Dignity Health is connected with. We can analyze these data using software to draw conclusions that we could never before when we couldn't even handle this much data. Imagine trying to cross reference hundreds of thousands of health records to see which gene will lead to a disease in 20 years by hand, impossible. Now, we can create programs that will sift through the data and allow us to find what is important and do the thinking, offloading the time-consumig labour onto the computer. This is the power of technology and Big Data, it is emerging now as one of the strongest tools of our time. With Big Data, we can improve the lives of people and provide companies with feedback or information they never could have hoped to gather before, and at Dignity Health they are vying to be on the forefront of Big Data science.
Twitter Big Data
2/19/17
I have began to work on the Twitter project that will hopefully be the final product of my internship here. Another developer here has a similar system set up only it maps the tweets geographically as they are tweeted out. We saw the United States light up with tweets of Donald Trump, but nearly none about genomics or precision medicine, although I won't say I was surprised.
I have began to work on the Twitter project that will hopefully be the final product of my internship here. Another developer here has a similar system set up only it maps the tweets geographically as they are tweeted out. We saw the United States light up with tweets of Donald Trump, but nearly none about genomics or precision medicine, although I won't say I was surprised.
This project is going to very useful for aggregating the overall thoughts facing nearly any issue or subject all by using the power of Twitter. While it is normally seen as something negative, social media is incredibly powerful in the modern era. As we now have the ability to store and process the immense amount of data, we can use it to better the experience of patients in the future or use a program like this for nearly infinite applications. I hope to tell you more soon as I dive into the code.
Kyle Grace
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Introduction
2/12/17
Hello Everyone,
As I began my time at Dignity Health this week, I thought I'd give a little overview of what I will be involved with during my few months here.
I discovered, from my first moments interacting with my team, that technology and big data have revolutionized the way we analyze society in diseases or even feedback. They seek to improve our understanding of diseases and better the care for each individual by compiling their genetic information and medical records and comparing it against other people to understand what the best approach is for their situation. While it may seem obvious, it is amazing what they are doing to improve the care for patients at their hospitals, like St.Joseph's. I am incredibly excited to become a part of the whole experience and get my hands dirty in the field working on programs and projects to push their efforts forward.
I will work with Big Data to leverage cutting edge technology that allows us to use all the data that is captured about patients and their treatment, as well as pulling in Twitter data to discover the overall sentiment felt towards St.Joseph's. This is an area where technology truly has the opportunity to better the lives of us all.
Thank you,
I can't wait to get started.
Kyle Grace
Hello Everyone,
As I began my time at Dignity Health this week, I thought I'd give a little overview of what I will be involved with during my few months here.
I discovered, from my first moments interacting with my team, that technology and big data have revolutionized the way we analyze society in diseases or even feedback. They seek to improve our understanding of diseases and better the care for each individual by compiling their genetic information and medical records and comparing it against other people to understand what the best approach is for their situation. While it may seem obvious, it is amazing what they are doing to improve the care for patients at their hospitals, like St.Joseph's. I am incredibly excited to become a part of the whole experience and get my hands dirty in the field working on programs and projects to push their efforts forward.
I will work with Big Data to leverage cutting edge technology that allows us to use all the data that is captured about patients and their treatment, as well as pulling in Twitter data to discover the overall sentiment felt towards St.Joseph's. This is an area where technology truly has the opportunity to better the lives of us all.
Thank you,
I can't wait to get started.
Kyle Grace
Recap of Week One
2/12/17
Well, I finished my first week. It was a mixture of emotions from initial boredom to great excitement. I was exposed to some of the awesome projects I will be involved in and I now am both ecstatic and scared to have things thrown at me that I've never seen before.
The main thing that I have been involved with this first week was a project involving the application of the human genome. Dignity Health is focused on combining the study of the human genome with electronic health records to better process, store, and combine this information to provide treatment that is specifically tailored to the genetic makeup of each patient. Very cool stuff. It is called precision medicine, and while they may not be the only ones working to better this field, the enthusiasm I have experienced truly excites me.
I spent a large amount of my time brushing up on my knowledge of genomics from AP Biology and furthering it more by discovering how they can use Big Data to reference genetic information of one person against thousands of previous patients to discover what the most successful course of action has been for people of similar genetic makeup. I am creating a sort-of guide to genomics that will better help the IT department understand them as well as solidify my own knowledge so I can have a strong base of knowledge moving forward. Understanding genomics itself, I believe, is vital for me to contribute in the beginning stages of creating a system to leverage Big Data in healthcare by integrating genomics.
Thanks for checking in, and I'll see you in my next post.
Kyle Grace
The main thing that I have been involved with this first week was a project involving the application of the human genome. Dignity Health is focused on combining the study of the human genome with electronic health records to better process, store, and combine this information to provide treatment that is specifically tailored to the genetic makeup of each patient. Very cool stuff. It is called precision medicine, and while they may not be the only ones working to better this field, the enthusiasm I have experienced truly excites me.
I spent a large amount of my time brushing up on my knowledge of genomics from AP Biology and furthering it more by discovering how they can use Big Data to reference genetic information of one person against thousands of previous patients to discover what the most successful course of action has been for people of similar genetic makeup. I am creating a sort-of guide to genomics that will better help the IT department understand them as well as solidify my own knowledge so I can have a strong base of knowledge moving forward. Understanding genomics itself, I believe, is vital for me to contribute in the beginning stages of creating a system to leverage Big Data in healthcare by integrating genomics.
Thanks for checking in, and I'll see you in my next post.
Kyle Grace
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