Ok, how hard should this actually be, I mean seriously? If you are learning how to do machine learning, then you have to have TensorFlow as one of your main tools.  TensorFlow comes in two main versions – the version that runs on the CPU’s in your computer, and the one that runs on GPU’s if your computer has “CUDA-enabled GPU cards”.   There are multiple benefits of using GPUs over CPUs – they are more specialized at performing matrix operations and mathematical transformation, and they run much, much faster. However, the GPU version of TensorFlow is not that easy to install, in ..read more

Ed Marx, who is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Cleveland Clinic, gives a fascinating keynote presentation to the HIMSS (Health Information Management and Systems Society) Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum.  His presentation is definitely worth watching.  There are a few key points that I would like to review.  These fit in nicely into the framework that I laid out in my blog post Healthcare Chief Data/Analytics Officers Must Master the Realms of Data Excellence, Analytics Excellence, and Leadership Excellence to Become “Leaders of Excellence” in Their Organiz ..read more

  You may have heard of the concepts of “Analytics Center of Excellence (CoE)” or “Competency Center (CC)” (1).   This is nicely explained in the reference (Wright-Jones, 2015).  This refers to a “cross-organizational group responsible for a specific function …, with an ultimate goal to reduce time to value”.  The main purpose of a CoE is to “establish, identify, develop, and harness cross-functional processes, knowledge, and expertise that have tangible benefits for the business”.  Making this concept become reality is fundamental to the success of healthcare an ..read more

There is a common axiom that today “every business is a digital business”.  There are several alternatives to this as well – “every business is a technology business” and “every business will become a software business” (Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella’s comment at the 2015 US Convergence conference).  Healthcare organizations are no exception – they are all digital, technology, and software businesses now.  And at the heart of all digital businesses is data and analytics.  This concept is well illustrated by the Gartner graphic describing their concept of a “digital business ..read more

I feel privileged to have been invited for the second year in a row to Cerner’s Strategic Client Summit.  The meeting location – downtown San Diego – and the Summit content were both fantastic.  I will attempt to summarize a few key concepts, and why I feel optimistic about where Cerner is heading – both from an overall perspective as well as from an improved product and end-user experience perspective. I was very impressed with the collaboration between Cerner President Zane Burke and Cerner’s new Chairman and CEO Brent Shafer.   I had the opportunity to have several conve ..read more

I have come across a few great resources that I wanted to share.  For students taking a machine learning class (like Northwestern University’s MSDS 422 Practical Machine Learning) these are great references, and a way to learn about them before, during, or after the class.  This is not a comprehensive list, just a starter. Textbook There is a free online textbook, Neural Networks and Deep Learning. Videos There is a great math visualization site called 3Blue1Brown and they have a YouTube channel.  There are 4 videos on neural networks/deep learning which are really informative a ..read more

Starting in the Spring Quarter of 2018 the MSPA (Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics)  program became the MSDS (Masters of Science in Data Science) program.  This was announced in January of 2018 and the name change become official in the Spring Quarter of 2018.  Existing MSPA students had the options of staying in the MSPA program with it’s requirements, or transferring over to the MSDS program.  I elected to transfer to the MSDS program.  There is a webex on the MSDS program – click here for the webex. In the webinar, Dr. Thomas Miller, the faculty director of ..read more

This course was taught by Dr. Thomas Miller, who is the faculty director of the Data Science program (formerly known as the Predictive Analytics program – I am going to post an article discussing the program name change from the Master of Science in Predictive Analytics (MSPA) to the Master of Science in Data Science (MSDS)).  Overall, this was an excellent review of machine learning, and is a required core course for all students in the program.  It is most definitely a foundational course for any student of data science in today’s world.  It is also a foundational course for t ..read more

It has been a little more than a year since my last blog post, so I thought I would provide an explanation.   The bottom line is that I have not had a lot of free time to update my blog.  Two years ago this month, I took over as the Interim Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the integrated healthcare system that I work for.  This was in addition to my role as one of our system’s Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO).   The interim CIO position was supposed to be just that, a brief period of time performing this role until a permanent CIO could be selected.&nbs ..read more

The results of KDNuggets’ 18th annual Software Poll should be fascinating reading for anyone involved in data science and analytics.  Some highlights – Python (52.6%) finally overtook R (52.1%), SQL remained at about 35%, and Spark and Tensorflow have increased to above 20%. (Graph taken from http://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/05/poll-analytics-data-science-machine-learning-software-leaders.html/2) I am about halfway through Northwestern University’s Master of Science in Predictive Analytics (MSPA) program.  I am very thankful that the program has made learning different languages a prio ..read more