Penn State National Science Foundation Center for Health Organization Transformation
(Penn State CHOT) - An Industry-University Cooperative Research Center
Fall 2019 Industry Advisory Board Meeting Recap 
From left to right: Haedong Kim (Penn State), Jerome Jourquin (Susan G. Komen), Qiushi Chen (Penn State), Jamie Gigliotti (Highmark), Prasenjit Mitra (Penn State), Hui Yang (Penn State), Cheng-bang Chen (Penn State), Alexander Krall (Penn State), Farhad Imani (Penn State), Ruimin Chen (Penn State) .
 
The Fall 2019 CHOT Industry Advisory  Board (IAB) Meeting was hosted by the University of Washington in October 17-18 at Seattle, Washington . There were more than 50 CHOT scholars, researchers, and industry members in attendance.
 
The meeting comprised research project discussions and presentations, which included one research impact and insight presentation by Farhad Imani from Penn State. Two CHOT scholars from Penn State, Ruimin Chen and Farhad Imani, earned the second and third place awards in the poster competition. CHOT's 2019-20 research themes include population health, care coordination, analytics and innovative technologies, patient experience, and access to care. 
 
Researchers from other CHOT university sites presented on topics including virtual health care, telemedicine, personalized health care, population health, social determinants of health, and patient-center data sharing methods. IAB members provided feedback on projects of interest and discussed the Phase III strategic planning with academic faculty and students. Penn State CHOT had guests from two organizations present: Jerome Jourquin from the Susan G. Komen Foundation and Jamie Gigliotti from Highmark. 
CHOT Scholars' Feedback 

"I presented our project on risk estimation and multi-stage decision making in breast cancer in the CHOT IAB fall meeting, 2019. I also had an opportunity to introduce my work in the poster session. I have received encouraging and constructive feedbacks from CHOT members. Furthermore, our previous work in recurrence analysis of breast cancer was invited and proceeded in the 15th IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. There was a great interest in the talk and audiences from industry and academia asked many good questions. I believe the discussions and ideas from the practitioners will help me to improve my research significantly." 

Farhad Imani

"I learned a lot about the CHOT project as well as the industry needs from presentations and workshops. I also had an opportunity to present my work during the poster session. I am inspired by the discussions and questions from other CHOT members. Overall, I had a great experience at the CHOT IAB meeting." 

Ruimin Chen

" Attending the CHOT meeting this fall was very informative and exciting. Networking with colleagues in both industry and academia is invaluable for the future development of the health care field. I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate and present research in a professional setting. Adding my voice to the greater conversation made me feel part of something greater than myself, and I look forward to continuing my involvement. " 
 
Alexander Krall

" The IAB meeting provided me with great opportunities to connect with industry partners and colleagues at other sites. It was a great experience during which industry partners look at health care research problems. I also had a chance to learn what people at other sites are working on and connect with them. The meeting was well organized so that people could easily discuss their ideas together. " 
 
Haedong Kim

"For a health care researcher, it is always crucial to know where real needs and industry challenges are. The IAB meeting provides a good platform for both academia and industry members to exchange new ideas, discuss the challenges in health care industries, and address those challenges to improve the quality and effectiveness of health care delivery. It was my greatest pleasure to attend this meeting and further develop a better understanding of how industry and academia should work together to advance innovations in health care delivery." 

Cheng-Bang Chen
Penn State CHOT Research Highlights     
Optimal Physician-Patient Matching: A Novel Methodology for Health Care Market Economics 

Ruimin Chen, a CHOT scholar and graduate student in industrial engineering at the Penn State College of Engineering,  is building a new sharing-economy framework for optimal physician-patient matching.
 
Internet brings the emergence of sharing economy, which has ushered in the need to develop a new generation of health care service platforms. One critical problem is to improve the matching of customers with services. While physicians have limited capacities and patients arrive randomly, optimal recourse allocation in such a dynamic environment is challenging. Very little has been done to investigate online matching algorithms for the optimization of recourse allocation in physician-patient matching, and the aim is to establish a new sharing-economy framework for smart health care service systems.
Virtual Reality for Health Systems Simulation

Alice Rong and Bryant Niederriter, CHOT scholars and undergraduate students at the Penn State Behrend, are working with the CHOT faculty adviser, Faisal Aqlan, to build new VR models for  health systems simulation.
 
Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an essential part of modern education and training. In healthcare, VR can be used to improve decision making and help patients to better connect with reality, cope with pain, and overcome anxiety and depression. This project will integrate sensing technology (i.e., eye and motion tracking) and VR simulation of healthcare environments to improve clinical judgment and treat individuals with mental disorders by improving their metacognitive skills. Traditional scenario-based patient simulations will be conducted in the advanced nursing lab at Penn State Behrend (see the youtube video below). VR simulations will be compared to traditional patient simulations and mental health screening tools. Researchers will develop analytical models to improve clinical judgment and predict the risk of mental illness. The proposed VR simulations and metacognitive interventions will provide training modules for healthcare students and professionals, and improve clinical decision-making in healthcare. 
 
 
A $950,000 expansion of the nursing labs at Penn State Behrend created three new simulation bays with high-fidelity patient mannequins. VIDEO: PENN STATE BEHREND
New CHOT Website is Launched    
We have just re-designed and launched the new CHOT website. Please visit  http://www.chot.psu.edu for more information about our new projects and exciting activities in the Penn State CHOT.
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