Diver in Healthcare Research

WPI students and researchers use The Diver Solution in the new Analysis Lab to analyze large data sets, including healthcare data related to congestive heart failure, as a first step toward creating a nexus for academic and corporate sponsored research.

One of WPI’s ultimate goals, according to the lab’s co-founder Brenton Faber, is “to cross-link disease, utilization, and finance data to get a more detailed description of medical practice.”

One of the early areas of focus for the Analytics Laboratory will be business intelligence for healthcare. Several research groups at WPI are working on various aspects of healthcare delivery design and operations, such as electronic medical records adoption and managing real-time clinical data flows for infection control and remote patient management. In each case, using advanced tools to mine and understand large data sets is important.

“For more than 20 years, we have seen our customers derive revolutionary gains in efficiency and profitability by extracting data from disconnected business systems and analyzing key trends,” said Fred Powers, chief executive of Dimensional Insight. “Some of our most rewarding work is in the field of healthcare, where BI insights can contribute to ‘the greater good’ of improving the quality and affordability of care. We are pleased to support the continuing advancement of business intelligence practice by exposing the next generation of its practitioners to The Diver Solution.”

Brenton Faber, who has worked in healthcare analytics and business intelligence and is now a professor of writing and rhetoric at WPI, is the founding director of the laboratory. “Situating this Analytics Laboratory in the humanities department is unique,” Faber noted. “The concept is to blend WPI’s strengths in computer science, advanced software and engineering optimization, with the humanities’ focus on meaning-making and narrative. Through projects in this lab, students and researchers will integrate quantitative findings with strategic decision making, policy formulation and knowledge building.”