- Read the Unit Introduction.
- Complete the assigned readings.
- By the deadline, post the deliverables of your Mobile Analytics Architecture Project for evaluation in the unit assignment folder and in Blackboard Collaborate (slide presentation).
A well-established life sciences organization, that conducted hundreds of pre- and post-clinical studies in its long history, decided to take advantage of the current information technologies in the mobile computing domain in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency of their medical drug trials. In particular, they wanted to seek better ways of conducting their ongoing initiatives related to obesity research. The first step they took was to create a new Data Science unit in charge of data analytics, machine learning, and data integration. However, before making any sizable investments into a full-scale mobile computing program and getting “real” patients engaged, they wanted to run a hypothetical pilot to see whether their potential investment makes sense.
As a newly hired Data Architect right out of a challenging graduate program at UIC, your job on this particular assignment is to collaborate with the Information Technology infrastructure team to create a mocked architecture for such a project and present its outcomes to the management team. Since you cannot yet apply your skills with “real” patients and new devices, you are searching for data and tools to design your project on paper, in order to convince your bosses to take the next step and invest into the more advanced wave of development. You decided on the following strategy that requires no external budget to begin.
Access the www.ClinicalTrials.gov web site. Enter the search term “obesity” into the “condition” search field and the search term “mobile” into the “other terms” field. Perform a search among studies showing ‘Completed’ status, find a suitable study that utilized mobile devices in a way potentially similar to your intended use in the organization, and describe the study and its outcomes. Pay particular attention to the use of mobile technologies, eligibility criteria for the study, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and how technology may have benefited intended purpose and influenced outcomes (positively or negatively). 5 points.
Determine how and what kinds of patient information would be gathered by mobile devices from patients in the clinical study you selected, where this information would flow, how it would be collected from patients and/or front-end devices to be injected into your application processing, and what data processing engine may be analyzing this data. This is essentially your input data into the application. Start with your intended goal that you would find within the study description and develop it into an idea for an application and ultimately a solution, as you think through the entire architecture. 5 points.
Write out specifically what kinds of medical data would be collected from the device, find a medical data vocabulary for this data type, locate examples of codes that could be used, outline a transport mechanism (interoperability method and its version) that would be used for data delivery and exchange between medical devices and your point(s) of data collection. Finally, describe what you would do with this data to derive any useful conclusions. 2-3 code examples are sufficient, but feel free to list more if interested. Please feel free to utilize a table format to report on your analysis, such as in the example below, but do not feel restricted to this specific format.
An example medical data table is as follows:
Data Type
Purpose
Vocabulary
Code Examples
Justification
Medical data table =5 points.
Draw a diagram of your mobile based architecture, starting from the point of data collection from patient using a mobile device(s) at the front-end to the data entering a central data collection point and moving into back end processing where you determine how to analyze data and produce the desired output. So, unlike Part 2 of the assignment, this is your end-to-end architecure that includes output. You are welcome to use descriptions on ClinicalTrials.gov web site, if available, but need to show your own creativity as well. You may have to research similar architectures online in order to complete this part of the assignment. We understand that you may not get it exactly right at this stage of the program, but would like for you to perform extensive research and apply creativity based on this research to arrive at a high-level drawing that makes sense. Once created in an application of your choice, i.e. Visio (free from UIC webstore), Gliffy, Lucid Chart, OmniGraffle, etc. – please convert to PDF prior to submission in Blackboard. 5 points.
Describe your diagram and technical solution in detail. Remember that your study intends to fight obesity and you work for a pharmaceutical company, so keep these professional goals/perspectives in mind. Here you need to finalize your justification for the life sciences firm to invest in the “real” product based on your hypothetical architecture. Just to clarify, this is your supplemental documentation for the visuals that you provide in Part 4 of this assignment. 5 points.
Your final step is to get ready for the presentation. You are in the driver’s seat here: imagine your audience and the solution that you described in detail, to support the clinical study with technology and analytics. Create a Power Point presentation intended for your management. Assume no technical knowledge or knowledge of the medical data terms on the part of your audience. Summarize your outcomes and the business proposal based on it in simple terms, and use more graphics/charts/diagrams than text to keep your audience engaged. Yes, a successful Data Scientist is not just a “technical” person. You must be able to wrap, conceptualize, visualize, and present your product, i.e. make business sense out of it. 5-8 slides are sufficient, but feel free to go above and beyond minimum requirements, if you wish. 5 points. Save your final Powerpoint presentation as a PDF.
Your deliverables for this assignment are:
Word document with answers to points (1), (2), (3), and (5). Include your name and unit number on the document. Submit to assignment folder in this unit.
PDF of your architecture diagram as answer to point (4). Include your name and unit number on the document. Submit to assignment folder in this unit.
Create a Power Point presentation and save it as a PDF, to satisfy requirement (6) upload to Blackboard. Include your name and unit number on the document.
*Note 1: You are a designer starting with a clean sheet, so if it seems that there is a lot of ambiguity in this assignment, you are right, and this is the intention. This is a situation you could encounter in the job marketplace when you enter or re-enter the workforce. Successful data scientists and architects do not attempt to solve or improve existing solutions. They either resolve known big challenges or create new innovations.
*Note 2: Many examples of software and hardware architecture models can be found online, and some foundational courses in the BHIS program, such as 515 and 520, have already introduced these models and concepts. However, in this case, some considerations should be given to the following:
- How data is gathered by a mobile device and flows into and through the application
- Data flow from collection to analysis
Sample Solution
