Expanding Roles of the Actuary, Analyst, and Researcher (Previously Health – Predictive Analytics)

Session Description:

Technological advancements and the availability of "big data" present businesses with opportunities that never existed before. These opportunities, however, do not come without risks to the naïve information consumer. Actuaries, analysts, and researchers have an obligation to not only leverage these advancements, but to also protect their organizations from misinformation and flawed conclusions that are becoming commonplace. Dr. Grana will lead a session touching upon some analytical risks that may not be apparent to the lay population.

Speaker(s):

James Grana is the Divisional Vice President for the Health Services and Outcomes Research Department within the Clinical Office at the Walgreens Corporate Office. He is responsible for research and advanced analytical activities that center on specialty drug, infusion, retail drug, health clinic, immunization, and digital health. Dr. Grana joined Walgreens in 2014. He has a Ph.D. in Health Policy with a concentration in applied statistics and health economics. Prior to joining Walgreens, Dr. Grana served as the Vice President of Enterprise Analytics at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) that focused on advanced analytics, pharmacy analytics, consumer analytics, government programs reporting, case mix adjusted provider performance measurement, medical management analytics, and the value based care analytics. Members of these teams were trained in statistics, actuarial science, and data manipulation. They conducted forecasting, program evaluations, predictive modeling, risk evaluation, and other analytical activities. Earlier in his career, Dr. Grana served as the VP of Business Data and Informatics at Assurant, a Fortune 300 Company. Preceding that role, he was he Director of Research and Quantitative Business Analytics at Aetna Inc. where he facilitated the mergers of (and subsequently led) analytical teams from Aetna, Prudential Health, New York Life Healthcare, and U.S. Healthcare. Previous to that, he was a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps, the president of a consulting company, and taught health services research courses at Penn State University and The University of Scranton. Dr. Grana’s work has focused on predictive modeling, provider performance measurement, medical management, risk stratification, pharmacoeconomic studies, market research, intervention analyses, and P4P compensation systems.