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Case Studies

The Case Studies in Data Analysis Poster Competition will be held online on Wednesday, June 1, 2022 The case studies are intended to provide enthusiastic teams of graduate and senior undergraduate students with the opportunity to use data analysis to address issues of current importance in society. Each participating team will choose to analyze one of the two studies described below. Each team is strongly encouraged to identify a faculty member to support the members as they develop their analytic approach and final presentation. Team members will work together to present a poster summarizing their methods and analysis results.

Case Study #1: Developing a physician performance model in critical care – Assessing quality and value

Patients admitted to the ICU are the sickest and most complex in the health care system requiring expensive lifesaving technologies and interventions. Further, care within an intensive care unit is provided by a collaborative team of health professionals. Many efforts have been made to develop ICU metrics to reflect the performance of a healthcare system. Traditionally, physicians participate in performance evaluations that are called 360 evaluations. The 360 model of feedback utilizes information from self-assessment, colleagues, non-physicians and patients. These assessments are useful, but fail to consider additional sources of data (e.g. patient specific outcomes including ICU or hospital length of stay, complications, and mortality) that may provide a more encompassing picture of physician performance. We are interested in developing a model for assessing the performance of an individual physician.

Case Study #2: Towards a clear understanding of rural internet – What statistical measure can be used to assess, compare and forecaset internet speed for rural Canadian communities

The Government of Canada has committed to helping 95% of Canadian households and businesses access high-speed internet at minimum speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload (hereinafter referred to as the “Commitment”) by 2026, and 100% by 2030. According to the CRTC, currently 45.6% of rural community households have access to the Commitment based on what’s available to them via an Internet Service Provider (e.g. Shaw, Telus, etc.) in their region, rather than what a rural household actually realizes at home in terms of internet speeds. We would like to understand the state of internet connectivity in both rural and underserved Canadian communities using consumer-provided data. Using data directly from the consumer, we will be able to understand connectivity in these communities as measured in their own homes.

Awards

Two awards will be presented to the top team in each of the two case studies. The value of the award from SSC for each case study in the 2022 competition is 750 dollars, with the expectation that this award is shared equally among the members of each winning team. Critical Care Medicine (Alberta Health Services & University of Calgary) will grant one of the two awards to the team working on Case Study #1. Cybera will also grant one of the two awards to the team working on Case Study #2. The Committee reserves the right to decline to make an award for each case study if the number of entries is insufficient. 
 
All participating students will receive a certificate of participation.

Important Dates

May 9, 2022 Registration

Teams interested in participating in the competition must submit the following information by this date by emailing the Chair of the Case Studies in Data Analysis Committee, Dr. Chel Hee Lee (chelhee.lee@ucalgary.ca). The registration information should include the names and emails of the team leader, team members and faculty mentor(s), university name, case study name, presentation title. In addition, we require that the number of team members (either undergraduate students or graduate students) in a team should be a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 4, including a team leader.

May 16, 2022: Abstract and group photo submission

The teams registered must submit the following to the committee chair, Dr. Chel Hee Lee (chelhee.lee@ucalgary.ca). The abstract template can be downloaded here. 

May 30, 2022: Submission

The teams registered must submit the PDF version of your poster to the committee chair, Dr. Chel Hee Lee (chelhee.lee@ucalgary.ca), by 5 pm (PST). 

Poster Presentation

Each poster is recommended to contain the following information:

  • Title of poster
  • Names of team members and university affiliation(s)
  • Objectives
  • Methods
  • Results/Main findings (use figures, tables, and text)
  • Conclusions (including strengths and limitations of your analysis)

You should acknowledge your team’s faculty mentor (if you have one) on your poster. The role of your faculty mentor is to provide advice and suggestions about your analysis, not to do the analysis for you.

Consider the elements of good poster design as you prepare for the competition. Some useful resources are:

  • https://guides.nyu.edu/posters
  • https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2049080116301303

June 1, 2022 Poster presentation judging

The Committee of the Award for Case Studies in Data Analysis will consider such attributes as result accuracy, innovation of the analysis methods, technical clarity, and cohesiveness of the analysis, interpretation and presentation of results in choosing winning teams.

Each poster will be evaluated by a team of 3-4 judges. The judging team members will make a consensus of all participating teams' ranking for each of the two case studies, respectively. 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to members of the Case Studies in Data Analysis Committee for SSC2022 for their contributions: Dr. Chel Hee Lee (University of Calgary), Dr. Zhaozhi Fan (Memorial University), Dr. Thuntida Ngamkham (University of Calgary), and Dr. Alex Stringer (University of Waterloo).