Practical Predictive Analytics and Decisioning Systems for Medicine: Informatics Accuracy and Cost-Effectiveness for Healthcare Administration and Delivery Including Medical Research

Dr. Gary Miner PhD received a B.S. from Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, with biology, chemistry, and education majors; an M.S. in zoology and population genetics from the University of Wyoming; and a Ph.D. in biochemical genetics from the University of Kansas as the recipient of a NASA pre-doctoral fellowship. He pursued additional National Institutes of Health postdoctoral studies at the U of Minnesota and U of Iowa eventually becoming immersed in the study of affective disorders and Alzheimer's disease.

In 1985, he and his wife, Dr. Linda Winters-Miner, founded the Familial Alzheimer's Disease Research Foundation, which became a leading force in organizing both local and international scientific meetings, bringing together all the leaders in the field of genetics of Alzheimer's from several countries, resulting in the first major book on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Miner turned his data analysis interests to the business world, joining the team at StatSoft and deciding to specialize in data mining. He started developing what eventually became the Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications (co-authored with Drs. Robert A. Nisbet and John Elder), which received the 2009 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE). Their follow-up collaboration, Practical Text Mining and Statistical Analysis for Non-structured Text Data Applications, also received a PROSE award in February of 2013. Gary was also co-author of “Practical Predictive Analytics and Decisioning Systems for Medicine (Academic Press, 2015). Overall, Dr. Miner’s career has focused on medicine and health issues, and the use of data analytics (statistics and predictive analytics) in analyzing medical data to decipher fact from fiction.

Gary has also served as Merit Reviewer for PCORI (Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute) that awards grants for predictive analytics research into the comparative effectiveness and heterogeneous treatment effects of medical interventions including drugs among different genetic groups of patients; additionally he teaches on-line classes in ‘Introduction to Predictive Analytics’, ‘Text Analytics’, ‘Risk Analytics’, and ‘Healthcare Predictive Analytics’ for the University of California-Irvine. Recently, until ‘official retirement’ 18 months ago, he spent most of his time in his primary role as Senior Analyst-Healthcare Applications Specialist for Dell | Information Management Group, Dell Software (through Dell’s acquisition of StatSoft (www.StatSoft.com) in April 2014). Currently Gary is working on two new short popular books on ‘Healthcare Solutions for the USA’ and ‘Patient-Doctor Genomics Stories’.

Linda A. Winters-Miner, PhD, earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at University of Kansas, her doctorate at the University of Minnesota, and completed post-doctoral studies in psychiatric epidemiology at the University of Iowa. She spent most of her career as an educator, in teacher education and statistics and research design. She spent nearly two years as a site coordinator for a major (Coxnex) drug trial. For 23 years, she was a Program Director at Southern Nazarene University - Tulsa. Her program direction included three undergraduate programs in business and psychology and three graduate programs in management, business administration, and health care administration. She has authored or co-authored numerous articles and books including with Gary and others, the first book concerning the genetics of Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's disease: Molecular genetics, Clinical Perspectives and Promising New Research. L Miner authored some of the tutorials in the first two predictive analytic books published in 2009 and 2012 by Elsevier. For ten years, she served as a Community Faculty for Research and Data Analysis at IHI Family Practice Medical Residency program in Tulsa. She taught predictive analytics online, including ‘healthcare predictive analytics’, for the University of California-Irvine. At present, Dr. Miner is Professor Emeritus, Professional and Graduate Studies, Southern Nazarene University and serves on the Editorial Board, The Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology.

Dr. Goldstein MD, FAAP attended the University of Miami’s Honor Program in Medical Education under an Isaac B. Singer full tuition scholarship, completed his pediatric residency training at the University of California, Los Angeles, and finished his Neonatal Perinatal Medicine training at the University of California, Irvine in 1994. Dr. Goldstein is board certified in both Pediatrics and Neonatal Perinatal Medicine. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital and emeritus medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Citrus Valley in West Covina, CA. He has been in clinical practice for 20 years. At the various places he has worked, Dr. Goldstein has become fluent in a multitude of EMR’s including EPIC, Cerner, and Meditech. As a member of the Department Deputies Users Group at Loma Linda University Hospital, Dr. Goldstein participates in an ongoing EMR improvement process.
Dr. Goldstein is a past president of the Perinatal Advisory Council, Legislation, Advocacy and Consultation (PACLAC) as well as a past president of the National Perinatal Association (NPA). Dr. Goldstein is the twice recipient of the annual Jack Haven Emerson Award presented to the physician with the most promising study involving innovative pulmonary research and the 2013 recipient of the National Perinatal Association Stanley Graven lifetime achievement award presented for his ongoing commitment to the advancement of neonatal and perinatal health issues. He is the editor of PACLAC’s Neonatal Guidelines of Care as well as the Principal author of both the National Perinatal Association’s 2011 Best Practice Checklist – Oxygen Management for Preterm Infants and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Prophylaxis 2012 Guidelines. Dr. Goldstein serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Perinatology as well as Neonatology Today, has represented the NPA to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) perinatal section, and is a moderator of NICU-NET, a neonatal listserv. He is an executive board member and is on the nominations committee for the Section on Advances in Therapeutics & Technology (SOATT) of the AAP. Dr. Goldstein chaired the NPA National Conferences in 2004, 2008 and 2011 and continues to be active in conference planning as the CME Continuing Medical Education (CME) chair for PACLAC.

His research interests include the development of non-invasive monitoring techniques, evaluation of signal propagation during high frequency ventilation, and data mining techniques for improving quality of care. Dr. Goldstein has also been a vocal advocate for RSV prophylaxis and “right” sizing technology for the needs of neonates. Dr. Goldstein’s recent publications have included “Critical Complex Congenital Heart Disease (CCHD)” which was dual published in Neonatology Today and Congenital Cardiology Today, the “Late Preterm Guidelines of Care” published in the Journal of Perinatology, and “How Do We COPE with CPOE” published in Neonatology Today.

Bob Nisbet, PhD, is a Data Scientist, currently modeling precancerous colon polyp presence with clinical data at the UC-Irvine Medical Center. He has experience in predictive modeling in Telecommunications, Insurance, Credit, Banking. His academic experience includes teaching in Ecology and in Data Science. His industrial experience includes predictive modeling at AT&T, NCR, and FICO. He has worked also in Insurance, Credit, membership organizations (e.g. AAA), Education, and Health Care industries. He retired as an Assistant Vice President of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in charge of business intelligence reporting and customer relationship management (CRM) modeling.

Nephi Walton MD, MS, FACMG, FAMIA earned his MD from the University of Utah School of Medicine and a Masters degree in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Utah Department of Biomedical Informatics where he was a National Library of Medicine fellow. His Masters work was focused on data mining and predictive analytics of viral epidemics and their impact on hospitals. He was the winner of the 2009 AMIA Data Mining Competition and has published papers and co-authored books on data mining and predictive analytics. Also during his time at the University of Utah he spent several years studying genetic epidemiology of autoimmune disease and the application of analytical methods to determining genetic risk for disease, a work that continues today. His work has included several interactive medical education products. He founded a company called Brainspin that continues this work and has won international awards for innovative design in this area. He is currently a combined Pediatrics/Genetics fellow at Washington University where he is pursuing several research interests including the application of predictive analytics models to genomic data and integration of genomic data into the medical record. He continues to work with the University of Utah and Intermountain Healthcare to further his work in viral prediction models and hospital census prediction and resource allocation models.