Policy and Practice April 2019

technology speaks

By Joseph Fiorentino

When Humans and Machines Collaborate: Four Lessons from the Fight to Reduce Infant Mortality

F or this “Technology Speaks” column, I’m going to share high- lights of how one state is enabling effective human-machine collaboration to tackle an important social and public health challenge: infant mortality. First, the machines—which include a data lake built on the Cloudera platform, machine learning tools and techniques for generating new insights, and powerful visualization capabilities for interacting with those insights. But what’s most exciting isn’t the particu- lars of these technologies; it’s how the state is approaching the effort. That’s the human part. This state has “flipped the script” on gathering and using data in support of better outcomes. In doing so, it is demon- strating the potential of collaboration between humans and technology and how each can make unique contribu- tions in support of better outcomes.

Here’s how the state and its partners are doing it, with four lessons we are learning along the way:

The team converged around three fundamental questions about infant mortality: Which infants are most likely not to see their first birthday? Which mothers are most likely to benefit and participate in program- ming? Which programs yield the best return on investment in the form of saved infant lives? Knowing the ques- tions to answer guided the team to the most appropriate data. 2. Work Across Disciplines Data and analytics specialists are critical to any big data effort. However, different areas of expertise will bring a unique point of view to questions and answers. This state is leveraging this by bringing together multidisciplinary experts spanning

1. Envision the Destination Human services organizations seeking to use big data to solve a challenge often start with the data themselves. First, they work to gather all the “right” data, and then they focus on getting them into a correct and consistent format. If that milestone is reached, they finally dive in to see what the data may reveal. Trouble is, data are only one piece of a much larger ecosystem of people, partners, and other agencies essential to understanding and addressing chal- lenges. That’s why this state took an unconventional approach—starting with a list of questions rather than a roster of data sources.

See Infant Mortality on page 35

Illustration by Chris Campbell

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