Health Sector CAM students take top prizes at Virginia HIMSS conference
MBA students from William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business took top prizes in the poster competition at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society Virginia Chapter (HIMSS VA) conference held on Oct 25-26.
Hosted at the renowned Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, the annual event offered an opportunity to share ideas and network with some of the region's most prominent experts in the healthcare IT sector. This year's poster theme, "Digital Transformation in Healthcare," called for projects with an emphasis on the digital revolution and its implications for the healthcare industry. A panel of hospital CIOs and HIMSS board members judged the posters and awards were given to the best submissions.
The first-place team, Mason School MBA students Kipton Davis and Kevin Cutro, were awarded $1,000 for their project, "Machine Learning and the Clinical Documentation Process," which focused on the challenges faced by clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs. "Suboptimal clinical documentation prevents hospital systems from being reimbursed millions of dollars for services provided," Cutro said. "That poor documentation can worsen quality measures used by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to assign financial rewards or penalties."
Davis and Cutro began investigating the transformative potential of machine learning and artificial intelligence after they were introduced to the idea by their Health Sector CAM (Career Acceleration Module) professor at the Mason School. Over the summer, Davis interned for Universal Health Services and was able to deepen her knowledge. "If it had not been for our classes and internship experiences, I do not think we would have come up with the winning idea," she said. "Together, we made a great team."
Other Mason School Healthcare CAM students earned top honors for their poster submissions including Julie Campbell and Priyanka Ranganathan (2nd place), Hager Ismail and Brian Fuller (3rd place), and Jonathon Gammon and Aaron Gilani who were selected by the audience as the People's Choice winners.
The Mason School's Career Acceleration Modules are intensive, seven-week courses that allow students to take a deep dive into their chosen career field through academic and experiential activities such as the HIMSS VA conference. Highly anticipated by students, the conference features industry-leading speakers, interactive panels and roundtable discussions, and provides an exceptional venue for attendees to establish quality connections with healthcare IT and clinical executives from the region.
