HCA Healthcare Challenge

This prompt is targeted toward those interested in Healthcare Operations/Disaster Planning, individuals capable of cleaning, analyzing, and categorizing data, and those with the ability to think through and develop a viable UI/UX to make information/tool usable.

Natural disasters such as hurricanes take a devastating toll on the communities they affect. With one third of HCA Healthcare facilities located in Florida and another third in Texas, the company braces for disaster every year. Here are a few key points from HCA CEO Sam Hazen following hurricanes in the fall of 2024:

“More than 50 hospitals and numerous other HCA Healthcare facilities went through preparations. HCA teams transferred over 600 patients over the course of a few days from a number of our hospitals that we evacuated. More than 150 nurses and clinical colleagues from across the country traveled to Florida to assist.

Hurricane preparation has been a standard part of operations for decades now, stretching from corporate employees, supply chain support, to healthcare workers serving on the front line. While this is a well-practiced aspect of ongoing operations in these areas, that does not mean that improvements cannot be made to the lifesaving care and preparations for the communities affected."

During times of natural disasters, how can patient assistance be improved through better organizing available resources from within a larger healthcare company and available emergency preparedness and disaster relief resources?

To provide a starting point, we will be providing a deidentified data set with over 200,000 of our employees. How can this data be used to better prepare our facilities for these devastating storms? What other sources of data might be useful?

It will be your job to answer not only these questions, but others that we may not have considered. For your insights to have the greatest impact and reach, we would like for like for your final product to have a UI for non-technical stakeholders to make use of.

HCA Dataset

Deliverables:

  • Document explaining analysis and proposed solution
  • Presentation slide deck
  • Demo of current solution
    • Link to source code if applicable

Suggested Languages / Frameworks / Tools:

Here are a few tools that may be useful. Feel free to use whatever tools you like though!
 
Deidentified dataset of HCA employees: HCA Dataset

TIMELINE
  • Competition details announced - November 2024
  • February 20, 2025 (11:59 PM Eastern) - Preliminary submissions due 
  • February 28, 2025 – Finalists notified
  • March 28-29, 2025 – Final presentations (during SCLC) and winners announced
PRIZES
  • First place: $2,000 USD
  • Second place: $1000 USD
  • Third place $500 USD
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENT
Only teams from current AIS Student Chapters are eligible to complete.   

Rules

  • The project submissions should be the work of the project team. If faculty and/or other individuals have significantly contributed to the submission, please be sure to note their contributions.
  • Alpha / Early development system solutions are completely acceptable.
  • Submissions that are based on pre-beta solutions and/or from pre-existing on-going coursework projects are acceptable as well.
  • The contest materials must be submitted by the due dates.
  • Teams must be members of an AIS Student Chapter.
  • If the number of submissions allow, graduate and undergraduate groups may be judged separately. In this case, a team with a 50% or more graduate student composition will be classified as a graduate student team.
  • No deliverable can identify the university or school to which the team belongs. The team must refrain from using school colors in the submitted documents. The video should not indicate to which school the team belongs. If school identification is included in any of the submitted documents or video, the team will be eliminated from the competition. 

Submit Here

Final Round

The top submissions, as scored by the judges, will move on to the final round, to be held in person during the 2025 Student Chapter Leadership Conference at the University of Alabama. 

In this round, the teams will be required to make a 15-minute presentation of their report to a panel of judges. After the presentation, there will be a 10-minute Q&A with the panel of judges.  Each slide deck must contain a title slide including the names of the team members (no email addresses or other contact information). The team should not identify its school affiliation on the title slide or anywhere else in the slide deck, nor should it mention that affiliation (directly or indirectly) during its presentation. Team members should refrain from wearing school colors.

Judging Criteria

Quality of the analysis/solution proposed (Word document submission evaluation criteria):

Criteria Exceeds Expectations Meets Expectations Needs Improvement Inadequate
Relevance 4 – The team’s analysis relates to the problem statement and utilizes the appropriate tools and techniques. 3 – The team’s analysis mostly relates to the problem statement and utilizes mostly appropriate tools and techniques but may have some areas of irrelevance. 2 – The team’s analysis is somewhat unrelated to the problem statement, and/or utilizes inappropriate tools and techniques, with several areas of irrelevance. 1 – The team’s analysis is unrelated to the problem statement and/or utilizes inappropriate tools and techniques, with numerous areas of irrelevance.
External Analysis 4 – The team incorporated an adequate amount and variety of data analysis and/or research used appropriately in the solution proposal(s). 3 – The team incorporated a mostly adequate amount and variety of data analysis and/or research but may have had a few minor areas where more research or data was needed, or the data or the research was not utilized as effectively as it could have been. 2 – The team incorporated a somewhat inadequate amount or variety of data analysis and/or research, with several areas where more data or research was needed or where the data or the research was not utilized effectively. 1 – The team incorporated an inadequate amount or variety of data analysis and/or research with numerous areas where more data or research was needed or where the data or research was used ineffectively.
Clarity 4 – The presentation and analysis provided a well-organized, complete, and clear description of the approach taken, research conducted, data used, and conclusions reached. 3 – The presentation and analysis provided a generally clear description of the approach taken, research conducted, data used, and conclusions reached, but may have had a few minor areas of confusion. 2 – The presentation and analysis provided a somewhat unclear description of the approach taken, research conducted, data used, and conclusions reached, with several areas of confusion. 1 – The presentation and analysis provided an unclear description of the approach taken, research conducted, data used, and conclusions reached, with numerous areas of confusion.
Quality and Effectiveness 4 – The presentation, analysis, and solution work together to create a compelling narrative. 3 – The presentation, analysis, and solution somewhat work together to create a compelling narrative. 2 – The presentation, analysis, and solution hardly work together to create a compelling narrative. 1 – The presentation, analysis, and solution are of poor quality and do not effectively communicate the intended message.
Solution 4 – The solution is easy to use and understand and would be viable in a real-world setting. 3 – The solution is usable but needs improvement before being used in a real-world setting. 2 – The solution is very difficult to use and is far from providing value to end users. 1 – There is no working solution or no solution at all.
Consistency 4 – The presentation and analysis delivered conclusions and proposed solution(s) that were logically and reasonably consistent with the data analysis and research conducted. 3 – The presentation and analysis delivered conclusions and proposed solution(s) that were mostly logically and reasonably consistent with the data analysis and research conducted. 2 – The presentation and analysis delivered conclusions and proposed solution(s) that were somewhat inconsistent with the data analysis and research conducted, with several inconsistencies. 1 – The presentation and analysis delivered conclusions and proposed solution(s) that were inconsistent with the data analysis and research conducted, with numerous inconsistencies.
Participation 4 – Multiple team members presented. Overall, the team members exhibited command of the topic and a sense of passion and enthusiasm for the ideas presented. 3 – Multiple team members presented, but some team members may have struggled to command the topic or show passion and enthusiasm for the ideas presented. 2 – Not all team members presented, and the team struggled to command the topic or show passion and enthusiasm for the ideas presented. 1 – Not all team members presented, and the team did not show command of the topic or passion or enthusiasm for the ideas presented.

Questions? Contact ais2025@ua.edu