Team FloriDUH to compete against teams from health IT giants Cerner, Athena, Siemens, Archimedes, and GE at the 2014 Health Datapalooza Code-A-Thon event in Washington, DC on June 1-3.
In a true-life David vs. Goliath battle, Team FloriDUH, a group of three independent contributors from across the country, has been invited by the Health Data Consortium, the Office of the National Coordinator, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to compete against a number of leading healthcare information technology industry giants at the 2014 Health Datapalooza finals. The competition takes place June 1-3, 2014 in Washington, DC. Teams are vying for $35,000 in prizes, awarded to the most compelling data visualization application that makes use of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Provider Utilization and Payment data set, released on April 9, 2014. Team FloriDUH was created the day the competition was announced and consists of three virtual friends, united by a shared passion for data science and analytics.
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Due to the nature of the contest, Team FloriDUH cannot divulge specific information regarding its application, only that it is focused in part on what they call The Void. Finalists will be judged on consumer usability, visual appeal, and the application’s use of the required CMS data set. To meet these criteria,Team FloriDUH has created a cast of characters who will tell the story of The Void on stage at Health Datapalooza, essentially bringing their data visualization to life.
In order to facilitate future development on the open source data visualization platform that Team FloriDUH is building for Health Datapalooza, the team has formed a non-profit corporation, FloriDATA Foundation, Inc., and is presently filing for 501(c) 3 status. The Foundation’s goal is to provide open source tools, including APIs and REST service integration capabilities, to allow other entities or individuals to use the analytics application that Team FloriDUH builds, and to expand the analytics capabilities to incorporate additional data sets beyond the Provider Utilization and Payment data.
The FloriDATA Foundation is set to launch a #FillTheVoid Crowdfunding campaign on May 9 through the healthcare-industry funding site, Medstartr. Their goal is to raise $10,000 over 30 days. The funds will then be used to acquire more data, optimize the hosting platform used for the application, develop additional application components, and cover the team’s travel costs to the Health Datapalooza event.
Team FloriDUH consists of the following experts:
- Team founder and veteran health hack-a-thon participant, Lauren Still of San Francisco, a Navy brat whose formative years were spent in Pensacola, FL. Lauren is currently the Policy and Regulations Advisor for cloud-based Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA), DICOMGrid.
- Nick Kypreos of Seattle, team data scientist and particle physicist who previously worked for Cerner and Fermilab. He is currently an independent consultant. Nick and Lauren’s friendship dates back to their high school years in Pensacola.
- Team leader and taskmaster, Mandi Bishop of Jacksonville, FL. Mandi is a partner in consulting firm Adaptive Project Solutions, Inc., and Chief Data Strategist for Surgical Momentum, LLC. She met Nick and Lauren via social networking, primarily interacting through Twitter about their shared interests.
The name FloriDUH represents the teammates’ affinity for their home state, and the state’s (and its inhabitants’) tragi-comic reputation for bungling various government programs, such as elections and Medicare claims management. In addition, the name offers a humorous approach to the monumental healthcare system transformation task at hand.
For updates, follow Team FloriDUH, on Twitter @teamfloriduh.
For more information, visit teamfloriduh.com
