Resoundingly Human

It’s Friday night, you’re cooking dinner for your friends or family. The wine is poured, the table is set. You’re preparing a favorite recipe, but have added a brand new spice mix to the dish. It smells amazing, and everyone agrees, it tastes even better. But where did this new seasoning come from? The answer? Artificial Intelligence!

To talk about this fascinating new application of AI, the result of a partnership between IBM and McCormick, I am joined by Robin Lougee, Research Industry Lead with IBM. 

Last October I was joined by Norman Reitter, chief analytics officer and senior VP of analytics operations at CANA Advisors, to discuss the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model, and how it is helping organizations of all sizes evaluate their analytics capabilities. In this episode, we will continue this conversation by exploring the new INFORMS Analytics Capability Evaluation (ACE) Coaching Program, which was developed to engage and assist organizations in developing and enhancing their analytics capabilities with the help of specially trained coaching experts.

I am joined once again by Norman Reitter, as well as Dave Saranchak, research fellow at Concurrent Technologies Corporation. Norm and Dave, who in addition to leading the ACE Subcommittee, completed two rounds of research of analytics models, developed the ACE Coaching curriculum and held the inaugural, pilot ACE Coaching class earlier this spring, and are now working to set up their first organizational assessment and schedule additional coaching classes.

Healthcare is a complex, often overwhelming subject, and the effort to match patients with providers based on patient needs and provider ability, known as the patient provider alignment (or PPA) problem, has consistently proven difficult to tackle. In the past, this was thought to have been exacerbated by the limited availability of information available to the public regarding providers and their performance, which could help facilitate better patient provider matches. However, despite efforts to increase transparency by making healthcare data open and available to the public, the PPA problem still persists.  In this episode, I am joined by Soroush Saghafian professor with Harvard University, whose research in the INFORMS journal Operations Research, “Can public reporting cure healthcare? The role of quality transparency in improving patient-provider alignment,” takes a deep dive into exploring this issue and offering some potential solutions. 

Has this ever happened to you? Walking up to your favorite local restaurant, looking forward to a delicious meal only to discover ... it has failed its restaurant inspection!

Yuck. I think there are few events that will convince you to eat at home more.

But what if there was a way to anticipate if a restaurant was at risk of failing an inspection well before this actually happened? In this episode, we will hear from James Howard, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, whose research has helped identify if a restaurant will fail an inspection before it actually happens. 

We’d like to think that our performance at work, regardless of our sex, is the primary deciding factor in deciding whether or not we are recognized for our work with a promotion. You do a good job, you earn recognition, right? Unfortunately, according to new research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research in certain fields this might not actually be the case. Joining me for this episode is Nishtha Langer, professor with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to discuss her study “Onwards and Upwards? An Empirical Investigation of Gender and Promotions in IT Services.”