Florida’s largest retirement community, known as The Villages, is growing at an incredible rate. As more than 10,000 people turn 65 each day in the United States, providing care for the booming senior population is becoming a greater challenge than ever before.
Efforts to make care more efficient and effective have increased in recent years with the arrival of health informatics and the application of analytics. Stepping to the forefront with a project that combines these disciplines are two University of South Florida professors, Dr. Ali Yalcin and Dr. Carla Vandeweerd, both of the USF College of Engineering.
Yalcin taught courses in the College of Engineering, and is an adjunct professor for the Morsani College of Medicine healthcare analytics course, “Healthcare Data Mining and Predictive Analytics.” Vandeweerd, also of the College of Engineering, works as the Director of Research for The Villages Health Unit and is an expert in aging, dementia and other factors related to senior living.
They have collaborated to create HomeSense, a product designed to alter the way caregivers see the way patients live in their homes. But no spoilers, you’ll have to listen to find out how it works.
Listen to their full conversation on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!
USF Health Online offers both master’s degree and graduate certificate programs in health informatics as well as a concentration in healthcare analytics.
Find out more about these fields and educational opportunities with USF Health here. To keep up with trends around health IT, learn more about our students, and find out what’s going on at USF, visit our resources!
