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Capstone students demonstrate technology’s transformative impact

Spring 2018 Capstone WinnersFrom streamlining the dining experience to changing the way families care for ailing loved ones, the Spring MIS Capstone Showcase demonstrated the transformative impact of technology. On April 24th, 2018, nine teams of seniors from three classes, as selected by their professors, presented their final projects. These projects were the culmination of a semester (and four years) of hard work, which involved everything from creating a business plan to designing a functional prototype.

The winning team, which was selected by a panel of industry experts and Temple faculty, designed an application geared toward urbanites looking for an enjoyable night out. The app uses real-time data to give insight into the crowd and experience at a given location, while also acting as a marketing tool for bar owners. Mentored by Sondra Barbour, Member of the Board of Directors at 3M, Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, and Marlea Tremper received a $500 prize. 

The full roster of projects presented at the April 2018 event included:

SmartCare
This project integrates smart pill bottles with a proprietary health management application that allows patients to manage their personal health and reduce the physical, mental and emotional burden on caretakers.  
Team: Ian Usher, Kayla Herbst, Eric Rose, Claudine Youssef, Yu Zhou
Mentor: Jeff Hamilton

Course Catcher
An application that allows students to better plan, track, and maintain their course schedules every semester.
Team: Jane Kraus, Michael Biffen, Justin Teyssier, John Kumpf
Mentor: Cindy Leavitt

The Move
An app geared toward urbanites and bar owners that allows users to search through bars based off of pertinent criteria and see real-time engagement data.
Team: Bridgette Brodnyan, Sean Dougherty, Kevin Lynch, Marlea Tremper
Mentor: Sondra Barbour

License Key Sentry
A software enabling organizations to improve the software license management process by distributing, tracking, and retrieving software licenses and notifying managers of improper usage
Team: Kellen O’Connor, Andrew Kondelin, Jack Perrotta, Michael Doyle
Mentor: Dinesh Desai

Blend
An application providing recipes and meal schedules for patients who are reliant on a blended diet.
Team: Cole Derhammer. Anthony Wong, Christopher Kutzler, Amy Njuguna
Mentor: Andrea Anania

myHealth
A patient-facing, patient-maintained mobile digital wallet for personal health records and a proprietary SFTP plugin that healthcare providers can use to access those records.
Team: Ari Abramson, Arlo Antle, Noah Gottlieb, Tymofiy Rabchuk
Mentor: Viktoria Friedman

Dibs
An application that allows users to make reservations at their favorite restaurants, select a seating preference, and order their meal ahead of their arrival.
Team: Ajah Puryear , Jose Gil , Noah Fulkroad  Parth Patel , and Malik Donald
Mentor: Bruce Fadem

Parallel
An application that allows users to rent out their empty driveways to others who need a parking spot.
Team: Gabrielle Finley, Matt Funk, Nicole Bilder, Anthony D’Amico, Alan Divver
Mentor: Michael Luckenbill

Book Broker
A system for college students to buy and sell textbooks at their university.
Team: Angie Wang, Tim McNiff, Jurgen Aliag, Frank Tkachenko
Mentor: Ilya Rogov

MIS launches new Visiting Scholar series

Amrit TiwanaDr. Amrit Tiwana, P. George Benson Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Georgia, is the inaugural MIS Visiting Scholar.

The MIS Visiting Scholar Series engages leading academics in a short residency at Temple. As part of the residency, the scholars engage with Fox faculty, doctoral students, and Institute for Business and Information Technology board members.

According to MIS Department Chair David Schuff, who created the program to foster collaboration and bring in new research and teaching ideas: 

“The Visiting Scholar program is a great way to gain new perspectives from top faculty in the field, and also to share with them the great things we are doing at Fox.”

Tiwana, an expert in platform ecosystems and IT architecture, has collaborated with organizations such as UPS, SAP, IBM, Lilly, and Toshiba. During his Temple visit, he led seminars on industry relevant research. Tiwana also engaged in one-on-one collaborative sessions with faculty, met with members of the Fox IT advisory board, and served as a guest speaker in a doctoral seminar.

The series will host one visiting scholar per semester. The next visitor is planned for Fall 2018.

Bauman is building the next generation of learning software

BaumanKonstantin Bauman’s research – building novel machine learning models – sounds challenging. Then he provides more details.

For a recent experiment with the University of the People, a non-profit online higher education institution, Bauman developed systems that were able to assess a student’s overall course work, find weaknesses and then make specific study recommendations before the final exam. The experiment showed that students who received personalized tips received significantly higher grades than the students who received no guidelines or generalized ones. 

It was a very simple algorithm but we really helped real people with their studies,” Bauman said.  “I’m really proud of the results of these first experiments and now we’re looking at going to the next stage, not only telling students what to read but saying, ‘You should participate in this online discussion’ or ‘You should watch this video.’

Assistant Professor Bauman, who joined the Management Information Systems Department of Temple University’s Fox School of Business for the Fall 2017 semester, has undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Data Mining and earned his Ph.D. in Geometry and Topology in 2012 from Moscow State University. 

Before coming to the United States to work as a postdoctoral research scientist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Bauman was in charge on machine learning research at Yandex LLC, “the Russian version of Google.” One of his projects there involved developing algorithms to determine which advertisements would be most appealing to users. Even a slight increase in the click-through-rate can mean millions of dollars for a business, he said.

Everything you do – any application you use or your clicks on a website — generates data,” said Bauman, who is teaching a course this semester on data mining. “A good business person should know how to get knowledge and insights from the data.

Many people don’t realize that machine learning and recommender systems are already making their lives easier, he said. It’s the technology behind email spam filters, Google’s top search results, Amazon product recommendations and Yelp restaurant suggestions. It is moving beyond algorithms identifying that someone who enjoyed the first book in the Harry Potter series should read the second one. 

That’s something that’s most likely already on your radar. We should provide new recommendations or unexpected recommendations,” he said. “We have information coming at us from everywhere and trying to consume it all would be overwhelming so we need this advice.

Bauman’s current projects include creating algorithms to make better restaurant recommendations based on user input and further exploring how machine learning can help humans in their studies. He is collecting data from students in his current programming class with the hope of aiding future students.

Since it’s a first programming course for most of our students, the best approach would be to practice, practice a lot.  We are developing a system where students can study online and take the provided learning activities in any order,” he said. “My idea is to find a way to recommend the ideal path so they don’t take all of the assignments, just the ones that will be beneficial to them. These recommendations should help students reach their learning goals in the most efficient and effective way.

Cognitive computing, AI, and analytics

Cognitive ComputingLearn best practices and current state-of-the-art from industry experts and leading researchers on November 15, at the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) symposium.

Jeff Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Business Technology, Pfizer will deliver a keynote speech focusing on AI-based approaches to improve patient health.  

Speakers from QVC, NBCU, Alexion, Comcast, DARPA, and other leading edge firms will focus on data platforms, cognitive networking, separating hype from reality, use of robots for process automation, adoption and ROI challenges, feature engineering, fraud, waste, and abuse applications, forecasting ratings, diagnosing problems, predicting customer behavior, and generating targeted personalized experiences. Presentations will include:

  • Case studies that showcase best practice examples
  • How to manage, organize, and implement pilot projects
  • The pros and cons of different implementation and organizational approaches
  • The current state-of-the art and a vision for the future

Join us to learn more and chart the path forward at: http://ibit.temple.edu/cognitivecomputing/

MIS alums are digital entrepreneurs

Peter HwangLike many entrepreneurs, Peter Hwang’s idea for what he hopes is the next big thing came to him when he spotted a hole in the market’s offerings: while traveling for work in NYC, he couldn’t find a quick way to find a good meal near his location without scrolling through unhelpful restaurant peer review sites.

People are writing a lot of irrelevant information that doesn’t pertain to the restaurant, like ‘After a long day walking around the city with my boyfriend, we were in the mood for X and we finally found this restaurant…’” says Hwang, who graduated from Temple University with a BBA in Management Information Systems in 2016. “It just came to me, ‘Why aren’t we just reviewing the dish?’ In the end, that’s what we care about.”

From that starting point came Bite, a mobile app that allows users to see how others have reviewed individual restaurant dishes using three criteria — Taste, portion size and final thumb’s up/thumb’s down – and a photo of the dish.  

The app – described at swipebites.com and available in the Apple App store and Google Play (Search using “bite review.”) —  allows users to search by dish if they need to satisfy a specific craving – Pad Thai, pizza or pierogies – or to determine the most highly recommended dish near their location from Center City Philadelphia to NY’s Soho to Southside Chicago.

It’s like a Tinder for food and when you tell people that they get really excited,” Hwang says. “It’s making the process of choosing what to eat more efficient.”

Josh MethHwang is just one recent MIS graduate finding a need and filling it with a new business and, in some cases, new technology.   Josh Meth, BBA MIS ’14, is working as a project manager at Ridge Spur Media, a company that develops digital strategies for businesses, while developing Auris, a new technology that can differentiate between sounds and act accordingly – i.e., if it detects glass breaking in a closed business, it can call 911 in case a burglary is in progress.

I’ve found my passion in being the middle man between new technology and business,” says Meth, whose company website is www.ridgespurmedia.com. “Auris is a technology that can be used to understand the audio events like the sound of anger or a door closing. Speech recognition was just stage one.”

Ryan OliveiraRyan Oliveira, BBA MIS ’13, and Dave Dupell, BBA MIS ’14, have launched AtmosFi – www.atmosfi.com — a service that helps businesses share their offerings with their local community while gaining insights about their customers via WiFi. They’re working with other Temple alum businesses as well, including Brian Linton ‘08’s United by Blue; Izzat Rahman ‘11’s Kayuh Bicycles; Jung Park ‘16’s Cocktail Culture; Scott Pawlowski ‘13’s No Fish; and Neil Patel ‘09’s Denteek Dentist.

We’re converting WiFi traffic into foot traffic,” says Oliveira, who initially thought of the business idea while traveling through Europe and finding himself reliant on business’s free WiFi. “Our strength is our ability to empower businesses to connect directly with customers and other businesses in their community…We’re helping the café, restaurant, gym, salon and bar all work together via cross promotion and collaboration.”

All of the entrepreneurs have used their Fox ties to grow their businesses, seeking guidance from former professors and offering internships to Fox students. They’ve also found that the soft skills they picked up while at Fox are just as important as their course work. 

David DupellAt MIS, we did hands-on prototype work in class and learned to solicit feedback to get it to something that people love and like,” Dupell said. “(But) just understanding how to effectively lead a team and be part of a team are skills you develop in college and they’re very beneficial when you’re developing a company.” 

Ayabakan Shows How Sharing Data Helps Hospitals Eliminate Waste

Sezgin AyabakanThe politicians currently determining the future of the American health care system should stop bickering and talk to Dr. Sezgin Ayabakan, Assistant Professor of MIS at Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

Ayabakan and three colleagues recently completed a study on the impact of health information sharing on preventing duplicate lab and radiology testing, perhaps by joining a Hospital Information Exchange (HIE). Addressing this prevalent problem would not only save money, time and effort but would also improve the patient experience.

These tests can cost thousands of dollars. Suppose someone goes into the emergency room and needs an MRI. The patient might have had an MRI a couple of weeks ago but the doctors don’t have access to those images,” Ayabakan says. “We also wanted to see if there was a business value for hospitals to join an HIE.

Ayabakan and co-authors Indrani Bardhan, Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng and Kirk Kirksey drew their primary data from 68 hospitals in North Texas that that were part of the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council. They analyzed 39,600 Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) outpatient patient visits between 2005 – 2012.  They found that the number of duplicate radiology tests significantly decreased when hospitals shared data. Also of note was that duplication of radiology tests were reduced 32.8% more than the duplication of labratory tests. They attribute this finding to the differences in data standards implemented in sharing various types of test results.

The complete study will be published in the December 2017 issue of MIS Quarterly. Ayabakan and his research team were the first to look at the issue of duplicate testing and an earlier version of the paper won the best conference paper runner-up award at the 2014 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Auckland, New Zealand. Ayabakan estimates the cost of duplicate radiology tests was about $300 per CHF patient, about $1.12 million in total, and that’s a low estimate as the researchers only looked at patients with CHF.

It was a very conservative approach, he says “We tried to control everything we could in our analysis.”

This study is especially relevant now as health care service costs in the U.S. are twice that of similar services in countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes most of the countries of Western Europe and Scandinavia, Japan, Israel, Australia and the U.K. A significant portion of the excessive waste can be pinned on duplicate testing. Ayabakan realizes in the past some hospitals have balked at joining an HIE. Some cite the cost. Others worry about losing patients to other health care providers. There’s also the challenge of establishing universally accepted data standards so all HIE participants use the same coding system. Such a switch could increase a member hospital’s initial investment.

Still, Ayabakan believes these changes are worth the effort. Health care spending currently takes up about 18.6 percent of the GDP. That percentage is expected to grow to 20 percent by 2025.

Promoting HIEs and common interoperability data standards across the spectrum can reduce the extent of duplicate testing and the associated cost to the U.S. healthcare system, he says. This is just one example. The estimates tell us that the total net savings from HIE could reach up to $77.8 billion annually.

Scholarships

ScholarshipYusuf G. Mandviwalla Endowed Scholarship Fund

The Yusuf G. Mandviwalla endowed scholarship Fund recognizes exceptional MIS students.

  • Award: Annual $2,500 scholarship to high performing MIS students who demonstrate exceptional potential achievement and accomplishment. Recipients will be recognized at the annual IT Awards Reception. The award is for one year and is not renewable.
  • Eligibility: New MIS undergraduate majors.
  • Criteria: Recipients are selected based on exceptional academic performance and potential by a committee chaired by the Chair of the MIS department.
  • Deadline: There is no formal deadline, scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis each year. For more information, please contact the MIS department at jallegra@temple.edu.

Ron and Ronda Riddell Endowed Scholarship Fund

The Ron and Ronda Riddell endowed scholarship fund recognizes exceptional MIS students.

  • Award: Annual $5,000 scholarship to high performing MIS students who demonstrate exceptional potential achievement and accomplishment. Recipients will be recognized at the annual IT Awards Reception. The award is for one year and is not renewable.
  • Eligibility: New MIS undergraduate majors.
  • Criteria: Recipients are selected based on exceptional academic performance and potential by a committee chaired by the Chair of the MIS department.
  • Deadline: There is no formal deadline, scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis each year. For more information, please contact the MIS department at jallegra@temple.edu.

James and Andrea Stewart Endowed Scholarship Fund

The James and Andrea Stewart endowed scholarship fund recognizes exceptional MIS students.

  • Award: Annual $5,000 scholarship to high-performing MIS students who demonstrate exceptional potential achievement and accomplishment. Recipients are selected by the Institute for Business and Information Technology. Recipients will be recognized at the annual IT Awards Reception. The award is for one year and is not renewable.
  • Eligibility: New MIS undergraduate majors.
  • Criteria: Recipients are selected based on exceptional high school performance and potential by a committee chaired by the Executive Director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology.
  • Deadline: There is no formal deadline, scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis each year. For more information, please contact the MIS department at jallegra@temple.edu.

IT Leaders Scholarship

The IT Leaders Scholarship recognizes exceptional MIS students.

  • Award: Annual scholarship up to $5,000 for new and current high performing MIS students who demonstrate exceptional potential achievement and accomplishment. Recipients are selected by the Institute for Business and Information Technology. Recipients will be recognized at the annual IT Awards Reception. The award is for one year and is not renewable.
  • Eligibility: New and current MIS undergraduate majors.
  • Criteria: Recipients are selected based on exceptional academic performance and potential by a committee chaired by the Executive Director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology.
  • Deadline: There is no formal deadline, scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis each year. For more information, please contact the MIS department at jallegra@temple.edu

The Institute for Business and Information Technology also offers a number of scholarships for MIS students.

 

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