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By Shelley Wunder-Smith

In February 2023,  (MSA 23) and  (MSA 23) participated in , where they were awarded Best Use of MongoDB for the competition.

As part of the challenge, Gulati and Arora, who were both students in ɫ����’s  (MSA) program, selected a problem statement from among four tracks: sustainability and energy, finance, healthcare, and sports. The duo chose healthcare, as they were interested in highlighting the current state of healthcare access in the U.S; specifically, they investigated the effectiveness of and access to healthcare systems across different states during the pandemic.

“We collated datasets containing data specific to healthcare facilities, mobility, vaccination rates, and Google Search trends,” they explained. “We also looked at a Covid-19 dataset that helped us explore how healthcare systems in different states performed during the pandemic, as well as which systems will need more resources and funding to perform better in the future.”

Gulati and Arora used MongoDB, a NoSQL database, to manage all of this data.

“MongoDB is different from traditional relational databases. It can support geospatial data, which allowed us to perform geospatial queries on the Covid-19 dataset’s location-based data, and thus analyze the virus’s spread on a map,” they said.

To communicate their data insights, Gulati and Arora created interactive dashboards and reports by integrating MongoDB with Tableau, a data visualization tool.

The pair noted that their MSA coursework helped prepare them for the Hacklytics challenge. Courses such as ISYE 6501/Introduction to Analytics Modeling taught them how to clean data and create models, while CSE 6242/Data and Visual Analytics showed them how to use visualization and software development tools.

When asked what they found useful about participating in Hacklytics, Gulati and Arora noted that the contest affords practice in making quick decisions to get results, as well as learning new domains and tools “on-the-go,” both of which are important skills for a career in data analytics.

“Ultimately,” they added, “we are very proud that our tool, AxicCare, can identify in real-time the disconnect in accessibility to available medical facilities and resources — and then, using data insights, recommend steps the individual states can take to bridge these disparities.”