The Blueprint
Welcome to FOS College, and the first edition in our March Madness series. One week before tip-off, we’re reporting on how Indianapolis constructed the largest sports semi-bubble environment yet.
The INFORMS Analytics+ Conference showcased how companies are turning advanced analytics and AI into measurable operational results
In most emergency departments, beds are a hot commodity. But some patients don’t actually need a bed for their treatment – and accurately identifying those people is a low-lift but effective way to increase efficiency without sacrificing care quality, finds a study recently published in the journal Management Science.
The researchers developed a simple decision tree, informed by mathematical and machine learning models, to help staff decide whether a patient truly needs a bed or can be routed to a “vertical processing pathway” – that is, an area where they can be treated sitting up. Many hospitals already have such an area but don’t necessarily have a systematic way to decide which patients are treated there.
American teenagers start their school day too early.
Medical experts have been clear for years: sleep cycle changes during puberty make it hard for teenagers to learn in the early morning. Later school start times have been linked to better sleep, improved mental health, stronger academic performance and even safer driving.
Most school district leaders know about this problem and care about fixing it. But changing the schedule can feel operationally impossible.
An audio journey of how data and analytics save lives, save money and solve problems.

Jeff Cohen
Chief Strategy Officer
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
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Welcome to FOS College, and the first edition in our March Madness series. One week before tip-off, we’re reporting on how Indianapolis constructed the largest sports semi-bubble environment yet.
An executive order issued by President Joe Biden has the potential to become one of the most important government documents in years directed at carriers and their customers working within the country’s transportation sector.
Odds are that you’re going to be more likely to deal with haters than fans on a Facebook page, according to a study. But smart moderation tactics can help defuse issues before they get out of hand.
North Carolina is among the best-performing U.S. states when it comes to distributing vaccines evenly among Black and white residents. That’s partly because the state is by far the best at collecting demographic data. About 11% of North Carolina’s Black population has received at least one shot, compared with 17% of the state’s white residents, the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker shows. That puts North Carolina in fourth place for the smallest spread between the two groups among states with the most comprehensive data sets. Other states might be doing as well or better than North Carolina in terms of equality, though huge numbers of incomplete records obscure the national picture.
The U.S. government has invested billions of dollars in manufacturing, used a wartime act dozens of times to boost supplies and yet there’s still not enough COVID-19 vaccine on the way to meet demand — or even the government’s own goals for national immunization. President Joe Biden, in remarks at the National Institutes of Health this month, said the nation is “now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July.” But at the current rate of production, Pfizer and Moderna will miss their targets of providing at least 100 million doses each by the end of March, let alone 200 million more doses each has promised by July.

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