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 HDAA 2023
Analytics with Altitude
Roundtable Abstracts

AI De-Mystified

The launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022 has made AI (Artificial Intelligence) a main talking point for vendors and healthcare organizations in 2023. With many solutions now being touted as "powered by AI", organizations may feel a sense of urgency to adopt this new, magical way to solve their problems. But how new and magical is AI, and what do teams need to know to be AI-savvy?

In this roundtable, we'll discuss the messaging around AI, a framework for defining and interpreting AI-associated terms, and practical considerations for choosing and implementing AI solutions.

Building Data Literacy through a Community of Practice

Building data literacy within an organization is important to move business strategy forward. Organizations have seen success in increasing data literacy by utilizing a data community of practice to increase knowledge and education. We will discuss various practices within our communities that have yielded an increase in data literacy. We will explore how to maintain a practice that spans beyond the core analytics organization. We will discuss how to start a community of practice with and without executive sponsorship and how to maintain the practice after it has been established.

Building Resilience and Reinventing Cultural Norms in a Remote Work Environment

This roundtable explores the experiences of a data solutions team as they navigate the challenges of transitioning to full-time remote work following the abrupt shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team's journey highlights strategies for building resilience, fostering collaboration, and reinventing cultural norms to maintain productivity and cohesion in a remote work environment.

The team also faced the task of establishing new cultural norms as a fully remote team and following an unprecedented period of high turnover, known as the Great Resignation. The impact of turnover on team dynamics, knowledge transfer, and project continuity will be examined. Strategies implemented to redefine roles, foster a positive work culture, and rebuild trust and motivation will be discussed.

Attendees will gain valuable insights into successfully transitioning a data solutions team in academic research to full-time remote work. Practical strategies for building resilience, maintaining productivity, and promoting a cohesive work culture in a remote work environment will be shared, providing guidance for similar endeavors.

Data Governance roundtable

Join this discussion to share experiences, lessons learned, and ask questions about establishing a data governance program. Together we’ll explore the following questions.

Executive Applications of AI in Healthcare

Many healthcare executives have discussed use cases for AI in healthcare for years—most recently with large language models. Almost always, the cases focus on point of care or service and back-office applications. These same tools have been demonstrated to enhance executive decisions. As clinicians were for years, many executives are reticent to accept/leverage the decision support. This roundtable will focus on the successes and obstacles to the application of AI to executive decision making. Come learn from others and participate in identifying and removing barriers to enhancing some of the most important decisions in healthcare.

Data Registry Wranglin'

The Heart Institute at Children's Hospital Colorado participates in nearly 30 different clinical registries. In 2023, we developed a multi-disciplinary working group to meet with each registry's Principal Investigator as well as primary abstractor. The team is working to:

  • Better understand our existing datasets
  • Create collaboration between the registries
  • Understand their processes and workflow to help break down barriers for the teams
  • Bring knowledge back to the Heart Institute as a whole and out of the specific specialties
  • Assist team members in participating in their registries at the national level
  • Create QI and Safety processes based on what is flagging
  • Inform our practice directors and executives regarding the return on investment for these registries

Our ultimate goal is to create a Data Warehouse for the Heart Institute based on our clinical registries

Doing My Job With Generative AI

Join us for a dynamic roundtable discussion on the revolutionary impact of generative AI in work processes. This interactive session brings together industry professionals who have harnessed the transformative potential of generative AI to enhance their productivity and creativity and those interested in learning from others.

Participants will share their firsthand experiences and insights on integrating generative AI into their work. Discover how this cutting-edge technology has optimized workflows, fostered innovation, and propelled problem-solving capabilities across diverse use cases.

Participants will share their various applications of generative AI, discussing specific use cases, highlighting the tangible benefits and outcomes achieved through the adoption of generative AI.

Learn about the challenges faced during implementation and gain valuable insights into overcoming them. Engage in thought-provoking discussions on ethical considerations surrounding generative AI and explore future advancements that can further enhance its potential.

Whether you are an industry expert, technology enthusiast, or curious about the possibilities of generative AI, this roundtable provides a unique opportunity to exchange ideas and be inspired by peers who are at the forefront of this transformative technology.

Join us as we embark on an exciting journey into the limitless possibilities of generative AI in shaping the future of work processes. Be part of the conversation that is redefining how we approach innovation and problem-solving in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

******* NOTE - this description and roundtable questions were mostly written by ChatGPT to demonstrate capabilities, and also some of the shortcomings. The text includes what I would consider overly excited, and also promises a discussion that might not organically arise from the roundtable questions.

HDAA Advanced Analytics SIG

HDAA Data Literacy and Catalog

Join this discussion to share experiences, lessons learned, and ask questions about establishing and maintaining a data catalog. Together, we’ll explore the following questions.

HDAA Epic SIG

HDAA Mentoring Program

HDAA Population Health SIG

HDAA Volunteering

Interested in helping HDAA advance its mission? Want to know the benefits that accrue from hosting a HDAA annual conference? Attend this session, moderated by HDAA Executive Director Eric Anderson, to learn more. We'll cover the volunteer opportunities that arise during the year as well as what it takes to host one of our conferences.

Improving Analytics Through Data Trust Initiatives

Digital Analytics team at Memorial Hermann Health System (MHHS) is an Enterprise Data & Analytics team that has successfully empowered our organization to gain insights from self-service analytics with data trust through data literacy, data quality, and data governance. We are advancing our organization's HEALTH strategy by enabling our clinical and operational partners to build and generate quality analytics with trust and responsibility.
Over the past several years, our organization has made use of data analytics to drive various business decisions. This, in turn, resulted in significant data and analytics requests for the analytics team. The opportunities the team wanted to address were

  • Streamline clinical and operational requests for simple data and analytics
  • Democratize key data sets to users with trust
  • Responsibly empower users across MHHS to access data and perform their own data analysis
  • Reduce analyst time spent on data extracts and resolve various analytics requests in a timely manner.

To the address that above, we created a pathway for anyone in the organization to independently generate data & analytics insights with a trusted enablement process. We will share our transformation approach from people to process to technology, our challenges, and how we achieved our success in enabling self-service analytics with trust and responsibility.

The Spice Must Flow - new approaches to staffing and data delivery services

A major challenge in clinical research data delivery is staffing core data delivery services. Data securely housed in HIPAA compliant databases needs staff with advanced coding skills to retrieve. Increasingly we see requests for “Big Data” as novel tools allow complex queries of much larger datasets than traditionally requested; big data science questions require broader datasets or population scale data. These are generally not manageable via traditional methods such as spreadsheets and must instead be delivered as relational databases. This feedback loop of complex data diving and cumbersome data delivery can significantly slow the research data lifecycle. When managed by small and highly specialized teams we face an unprecedented challenge to the traditional biomedical informatics pipeline.


At UCAMC we address these challenges via new data delivery business models:

  • Unit Dedicated Resources: These positions are dedicated to clinical service lines (e.g. Ophthalmology, Cardiology, etc.) or campus entities (e.g. Cancer Center). These are employees of our service center, Health Data Compass, embedded with clinical research leaders. Effort is balanced and Compass managers oversee work and training, and review compliance documentation, while clinical service leads manage duties and provide subject matter instruction. This encourages growth as Clinical Informaticians.
  • Supported Self Service: Under Federal law only de-identified data can be shared without additional security and compliance in place (e.g. IRB approval, BAAs, etc.), but de-identified patient data lacks utility due to the loss of spatio-temporal relationships. In partnership with Compliance and Patient Privacy we developed data resources mimicking a limited data set using obfuscated data that can thus be treated as de-identified. These data are made available to the campus via a Google Cloud-based data browser, and staffed by dedicated FTE.

Women in Analytics SIG Roundtable

We would like to continue the tradition of having a Women in Analytics SIG roundtable at the conference. We typically promote an open discussion but will come prepared with questions or topics to discuss with the group. Topics in the past have included career development and navigation, work life balance, networking and mentoring, and others.