Last October we announced the launch of our exciting new student case competition, Defining the Future of Transformative Care Today. The case study challenge provides students with the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience that isn’t always accessible in a typical classroom or lecture hall setting. Working together with a team of bright and like-minded health IT students, the student groups rolled up their sleeves and quickly got to work navigating HIMSS-supplied case studies.
The inaugural HIMSS Student Case Competition provided opportunities for interdisciplinary teams comprised of undergraduate, graduate, residents, or Fellows to demonstrate proficiency in an understanding of the vast body of knowledge that comprises health information and technology.
The competition was established with a generous donation honoring former HIMSS employee Marc Holland. Though his life was unexpectedly cut short, Marc was fully engaged in his life’s work and displayed the same passion for health information and technology that the judging panel sought to discover in the winning student case competition participants.
The winning groups were able to successfully create a response to a future state of the HIMSS-supplied case study, create a slide deck that supported their findings, present the future state and field questions about their work. Their work was also assessed based on:
2018 Winning Student Case Competition Teams
We’re excited to share with you the names of the first, second and third place teams:
First Place: Cornell University
Team Name: BIG RED Team, from the Sloan Program in Health Administration at Cornell University
Team Members:
Freddy Terrazas Escamilla
Vishruti Vaikundan
Joseph De Los Santos
Tony German, faculty advisor; executive director, Sloan Program
Second Place: University of Central Florida
Team Name: UCF HIMSS Team
Team Members:
Nicholas Martinez
Tyler Winterfeld
Varadraj P. Gurupur, faculty advisor; assistant professor, health management and informatics
Third Place Finalist: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Team Name: UAB Team
Team Members:
Jeffrey DeGarmo
Candice Riggs
Jason Bains
Sue Feldman RN, MEd, Ph.D., faculty advisor; director, graduate programs in health informatics
Seeing the hard work that evolved from this competition helps one put into perspective just how dedicated and engaged the next generation of healthcare leaders is already proving to be. A huge congratulations to the finalists above, and a sincere thanks to all participants, faculty advisors, staff and volunteers involved. Although we were only able to select a limited amount of finalists, all students attained valuable knowledge and experience to better equip them for their career in health information and technology.
The first place finalist group will present their findings from the Competition at the 2018 HIMSS Global Conference & Exhibition, during session 128.