SAVING THE MARGINALIZED WITH ANALYTIC SUPERPOWERS.

Illumino Battles Frackture

In Datapolis, a subtle, insidious sickness is spreading;

a sickness that is completely curable simply by

having access to the necessary medicine that would

restore them to good health.

People are imperiled by the sinister villain, Frackture, who intends to bring

the city to its knees through a nefarious plot. Knowing he cannot prevent

the medicine from going out to the people requiring it, he chooses instead to

make it impossible to find the people who need it. By stealing into the highly

sophisticated worldwide network of societal information, he hides the citizens’

data, shatters it into indecipherable bits and scatters it into completely disparate

locations throughout the vast labyrinth of databases. Finding and piecing together

the information takes precious weeks and months, preventing access to medical

care for those who need it most.

The Datapolis Council of Elders is frantic. Realizing that critical information

is disappearing, they call on a brilliant young man trained in actuarial

induction, information management, dynamic scripting and processing,

random population sampling, non-linear regression and predictive

modeling. Dedicated to helping his fellow citizens, he commits himself to

the task of creating an enterprise data warehouse, gathering together all

the necessary data to speed healthcare out to the needy, and using in-

database analytics to project the long-term impact.

Dr. Insight and The Center of Excellence immediately perceive they are witnessing

the emergence of a new Analytic hero. The young man is secretly recruited and, in

a ceremony worthy of a noble knight, is sent forth as Illumino; the first Hero of

THE CENTER OF EXCELLENCE.

In response, Frackture steps up his attacks and fragments more and more

valuable, life-saving data, burying it ever deeper within the system. The

citizens of Datapolis gather around the Council of Elders and look on

with anticipation as Illumino scours the immense information network.

Using his mastery of enterprise information management, speed and

agility, he organizes and analyzes billions of tiny pieces of seemingly

unconnected and splintered information. With blazing speed, the names

of the marginalized citizens of Datapolis appear on the displays around

the Council of Elders. Cheers erupt and, with precision timing, medicine is

dispatched, reaching the desperate victims not a moment too soon.

That evening as the sun sets on the proud city of Datapolis, families and friends

gather around each other, talking excitedly about the events of the last few

weeks. As they head for their homes, they will rest securely tonight knowing

their loved ones are healed because of the amazing, life-changing work of

Illumino, Dr. Insight and The Center of Excellence.

QUICK STATS

ALTER EGO

Rick Andrews | Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Rick Andrews has been a programmer/analyst for nearly twenty years and has worked in the healthcare industry since the turn of the century. He has experience in a variety of roles such as information systems specialist, health insurance specialist, senior data analyst, engineering analyst, systems designer, team leader, and mentor. He works in an array of computing environments such as mainframe, UNIX, and Windows® and his strongest technical skills are SAS® programming and the Structure Query Language (SQL).

Rick works in the Office of the Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and along with his wife Kim, is the organizer of the CMS SAS User Group. He has trained hundreds of users over the years and meets on a monthly basis to continuously train others, which helps to keep CMS economists, statisticians, actuaries and health specialists on the cutting edge of their fields. His step-daughter, Sophia, has already learned DATA STEP terminology at seven years of age. Ethan, age two, just wants to go outside.

The opinions Rick shares are his own. He does not make endorsements on behalf of CMS or the Department of Health and Human Services concerning the use of products and services.