CHSI's William Paiva, left, and Elvena Fong, right, recognize WeCovery team members Bryan Naidenov and Jiwon Min for placing first in the third annual Health Data Shootout.

Students offer opioid epidemic solutions during third annual Health Data Shootout

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Oklahoma State University’s Center for Health Systems Innovation concluded the third annual Health Data Shootout March 29 at the Wes Watkins Center in Stillwater.

The Health Data Shootout is an analytics-based competition utilizing real world health data from Cerner Health Facts. OSU undergraduate and graduate students utilized cross-curricular perspectives to develop applicable health solutions. The competition included over 115 competitors stemming from over 20 diverse majors including analytics, health sciences and business/entrepreneurship.

This year’s event focused on the growing opioid and opioid addiction epidemic. This topic was selected because of the health issues facing the medical community and legislators.

“The opioid crisis is a significant challenge in Oklahoma and throughout the United States,” said Dr. William Paiva, executive director of CHSI. “There is a need for many arrows in the quiver to address this challenge, and predictive health analytics is one of those arrows.”

New this year was the option for online students from the various OSU campuses to compete in the HDS.

After working remotely for four weeks, the top six teams presented to the panel of judges during the closing ceremony.

The panel of judges included Dr. Martin Martucci of Tulsa Pain Consultants, Tina McKaig of Cerner Corporation, and Cooper Zelnick of Groups: Recover Together for New England, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and California.

The teams taking home cash prizes up to $1,000 were:

First place, WeCovery, consisting of Bryan Naidenov, Jiwon Min, Ahbiram Pannala and Arindam Mukeriee;
Second place, A Dose of Hope, consisting of Neil Belford, Josh Bowlin, Josua Brikowski and Drew Lester;
Third place, MaStats, consisting of Bei Xia, Biting Zhou, Meghan Sealey, Qianbo Sun and Yingli Deng.

The judging panel was impressed with the quality and applicability of the solutions presents and provided positive feedback to the participants.

“It was exciting for me to see how cutting-edge data analysis can help us prescribe pain medicine more safely,” Martucci said. “[The competitors] provided me with insight that even 20 years of clinical practice had not. I look forward to using data analysis in my practice in the future.”

Carrie Slatton-Hodges, deputy commissioner of treatment and recovery for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, was the featured speaker at the ceremony.

To learn more about CHSI and the Health Data Shootout, visit the website: https://business.okstate.edu/chsi/health-data-shootout/index.html.