Humana-Mays Health Care Analytics 2019 Case Competition Winners Announced

The student team of Ozgur Cetinok, Leah Kelly, and Erica Millwater from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has won the $30,000 First Place prize in the Humana-Mays Health Care Analytics 2019 Case Competition sponsored by health and well-being company Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

Over 1,300 masters level students representing over 80 major universities in the U.S. registered for the national competition to compete for $52,500 in total prizes. The third annual competition was open to all accredited educational institutions based in the United States. Full-time and part-time master’s students from accredited Master of Science, Master of Arts, Master of Information Systems, Master of Public Health, Master of Business Administration programs, or other similar master’s programs in business, healthcare, or analytics, were eligible to enter.

Ozgur Cetinok, Leah Kelly, and Erica Millwater received the top prize following a presentation Thursday, Nov. 14 to an executive panel of judges at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School’s CityCentre Houston location. The Second Place prize of $15,000 was awarded to Saurabh Annadate and Tanya Tandon from Northwestern University, while the Third Place prize of $7,500 was presented to Hong Gao, Shuyu Wang and Jie Yang from New York University (NYU).

“This contest is an excellent way for students to practice their analytical skills on the current challenges we face in health care,” said Heather Cox, Chief Digital Health and Analytics Officer for Humana. “Their creativity and passion is impressive, and those qualities are exactly what we need as we continue to leverage technology to simplify health care for consumers.”

The analytics case received by the students was designed to be multi-faceted and complex, similar to a real-world business problem. This year’s competition focused on chronic pain and the treatment of this condition through long-term opioid therapy, which has increased dramatically over the past two decades. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 1 in 4 patients receiving long-term opioid therapy in a primary care setting will struggle with opioid disorder. Using de-identified data, the students were asked to predict long-term opioid therapy post initial treatment. The goal is to identify patients at risk for continued long-term use of opioid therapies allowing for early intervention.

“Mays Business School is a model academic institution championing responsible research and teaching on every aspect of decision making in businesses. To that end, I am pleased that the students’ analyses will help Humana shape the way the industry delivers healthcare to alleviate the opioid epidemic,” says Arvind Mahajan, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at Mays Business School. “This case study is an example of how students learn to apply their analytical skills to solve complex business problems which can have a social impact, and in this case, improve the lives of patients and their families.”

The teams were judged based on the following criteria:

• Ability to establish key performance indicators aligned to business needs
• Quantitative analysis identifying key business insights
• Ability to provide unique insights for business improvements
• Professionalism and visualization skills

This is the third year of the competition, which has grown to be one of the top healthcare analytics case competitions in country. In its inaugural year in 2017, the competition attracted more than 300 master’s degree candidates representing 109 teams from 19 major universities in the U.S.