“Complete Your Clinical Trial With Our File Data” Clinical trials that support new drug development can cost over a billion dollars. A new industry has popped up – data collectors and aggregators that provide digital data from their files as evidence in pharmaceutical clinical trials. The gold standard in a clinical trial is the randomizedContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Clinical Trials”
Category Archives: Industry Spotlight
Workforce Management
Anyone who has worked in retail knows the anxiety that attends workforce scheduling for both manager and employee. The manager wonders “Will my employees show up at the right times?” The employee wonders “Will I be scheduled for inconvenient times? Enough hours? Too many hours?” The ability of Uber and Lyft to attract drivers, despiteContinue reading “Workforce Management”
Industry Spotlight: Health Analytics
Patient Data Management Health analytics is a hot topic now, but to do the analytics you need data – this is where Electronic Health Records (EHR) come in. An integrated, standardized system for sharing and accessing health data has been “just around the corner” now for more than a decade. Despite a big push byContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Health Analytics”
Industry Spotlight: HR (People Analytics)
Analytics has come to HR. It’s partly Orwellian, tracking what employees do on the computer, and partly warm and fuzzy, leveraging the true informal organizational structure via network analysis (jump into Friday’s Network Analysis course to learn the basics). One dimension assumes the worst about employees, and gives bosses extra powers to keep tabs onContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: HR (People Analytics)”
Industry Spotlight: Hospitals
Hospitals are a major employer of statisticians and analytics professionals, both in support of clinical research like the retinopathy study described earlier, and to improve hospital operations (outcomes, cost management, etc.). Here are a few quick facts about the hospital industry: US hospital revenue totals over $1 trillion – about 5% of GDP. This isContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Hospitals”
Industry Spotlight: Baseball (Sports) Statistics
The U.S. baseball season opens Thursday, March 28, and celebrates the 48th season of analytics in baseball, beginning with the founding of the Sabermetric Society in 1971 (the same year that Satchel Paige entered the Hall of Fame). Analytics has come a long way in sports, and now has its own conference, the MIT SportsContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Baseball (Sports) Statistics”
Industry Spotlight: Precision Agriculture
The application of analytics to agriculture has given rise to what is called “precision agriculture,” a science that seeks to take advantage of and use detailed information that is local in time and place. Tractors and farm equipment are being equipped with sensors and software that allow them to respond automatically to external data, andContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Precision Agriculture”
Industry Spotlight: Agriculture
Weeds are big business – the global herbicide market is over $35 billion annually. Weeds are also big government (think “invasive species”). California’s listing of weeds is called Encycloweedia, and the state publishes a quarterly newsletter called Noxious Times. Colorado publishes a similar periodical, Invader. The weed-killer Roundup is the focus of lawsuits that illustrateContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Agriculture”
Industry Spotlight: Credit Scoring
In the U.S., credit scoring is dominated by three companies – Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, employing roughly 30,000 people. An important player in the scoring methodology is FICO, previously Fair Isaac Corporation, and the scores are typically called “FICO scores.” Credit scoring is the oldest application of predictive modeling, fulfilling a need that has beenContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Credit Scoring”
Industry Spotlight: Package Delivery Business
Nothing better illustrates the encroachment of data science and analytics on the older “economy of tangible things” than the business of delivering packages. The use of analytics in package delivery is not new. Companies like UPS and Fedex are longtime users of operations research methods like optimization and simulation to route inter-city shipments, site newContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Package Delivery Business”
Industry Spotlight: Consulting
When a new technology arrives, consulting companies can quickly add staff and expertise to build institutional capacity centered around the technology in ways companies focused on delivering their own products and services cannot. Large consulting companies like Booz Allen and McKinsey, as well as smaller analytics-centric firms like Elder Research, thus constitute a significant jobContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Consulting”
Industry Spotlight: Automotive
The auto industry serves as a perfect exemplar of three key eras of statistics and data science in service of industry: Total Quality Management (TQM) First in Japan, and later in the U.S., the auto industry became an enthusiastic adherent to the Total Quality Management philosophy. Fundamentally, TQM is all about using data to improveContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Automotive”
Industry Spotlight – Pharma
The cost of bringing a new drug to market is over $2 billion, by some estimates. This covers the R&D, clinical trial testing and regulatory approval costs of the drug that makes it through the whole process, and also the same costs of the 9 drugs that don’t make it, for each drug that does.Continue reading “Industry Spotlight – Pharma”
Industry Spotlight – Precision Agriculture
The application of analytics to agriculture has given rise to what is called “precision agriculture”, a science that seeks to take advantage of and use detailed information that is local in time and place. Tractors and farm equipment are being equipped with sensors and software that allow them to respond automatically to external data, andContinue reading “Industry Spotlight – Precision Agriculture”
Industry Spotlight: Credit Scoring
In the U.S., credit scoring is dominated by three companies – Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, employing roughly 30,000 people. An important player in the scoring methodology is FICO, previously Fair Isaac Corporation, and the scores are typically called “FICO scores.” Credit scoring is the oldest application of predictive modeling, fulfilling a need that has beenContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Credit Scoring”
Industry Spotlight: The IRS is Watching You
The IRS (U.S. Internal Revenue Service) has been using computers to choose tax returns for audit since 1962. Early on, the selection was rule-based, but the IRS turned to statistical modeling in 1969, using the oldest predictive analytics model in the toolbox – discriminant analysis. Discriminant analysis, a linear classification technique, was first proposed byContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: The IRS is Watching You”
Industry Spotlight: Package Delivery
Nothing better illustrates the encroachment of data science and analytics on the older “economy of tangible things” than the business of delivering packages. The use of analytics in package delivery is not new. Companies like UPS and Fedex are longtime users of operations research methods like optimization and simulation to route inter-city shipments, site newContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Package Delivery”
Industry Spotlight: Baseball – Opening Day & Statistics in Sports
The U.S. baseball season opens Thursday, March 28, and celebrates the 48th season of analytics in baseball, beginning with the founding of the Sabermetric Society in 1971 (the same year that Satchel Paige entered the Hall of Fame). Analytics has come a long way in sports, and now has its own conference, the MIT SportsContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Baseball – Opening Day & Statistics in Sports”
Industry Spotlight: Customer Segmentation
Are you “young and rustic?” Or perhaps a “toolbelt traditionalist?” These are nicknames given to customer segments identified by market research firm Claritas, with its statistical clustering tool. Long before the advent of individualized product recommendations, business sought to segment customers into distinct groups on the basis of purchase behavior, demographic variables, and geography, toContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: Customer Segmentation”
Industry Spotlight: CROs
CRO’s, or contract research organizations, are a $40 billion industry, growing at close to 12% per year. They provide contract services to the pharmaceutical industry, including statistical design and analysis, laboratory services, administration of clinical trials, and monitoring of drugs once they are on the market. Developing a new drug and bringing it to marketContinue reading “Industry Spotlight: CROs”