Working Groups

Announcement

The Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Working Group of the American Medical Information Association (AMIA) is announcing its second annual data mining competition for the purpose of studying best practices related to knowledge discovery in health care data. This year’s data set is the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This is a juried, international data mining competition open to students of any subject or discipline. Four winning individuals or teams will be invited to present their results at the AMIA 2008 Annual Symposium. (No funds for travel or Symposium registration will be provided). Final submissions for the competition are due to the moderator by midnight, September 15, 2008, MDT. Winners of the contest will be invited to present their work at the AMIA Annual Symposium in a panel sponsored by the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Working Group. Winners will be selected and recognized by an international panel of judges associated with the KDDM-WG. Please visit http://www2.amia.org/mbrcenter/wg/kddm/contest.asp for more details.

Please review the following information carefully and contact the moderator, Mollie R. Poynton, PhD, APRN, at mollie.poynton@nurs.utah.edu with any questions. Questions may be anonymized and posted on the AMIA web site along with Dr. Poynton’s response, for the benefit of all entrants.

Eligibility

This contest is open to student members of the American Medical Informatics Association, planning to attend the AMIA 2008 Annual Symposium. However, students may hail from any subject or discipline. For information on joining AMIA, please visit: http://www2.amia.org/mbrcenter/mbrshp/ . The work can be completed by an individual or group, but only one individual will present at the symposium for a winning team.

Participation in the Contest

As a contestant, you are invited to produce meaningful information/ knowledge with knowledge discovery or data mining approaches of your choice, using the publicly available National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. The data itself is publicly accessible, and available here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm. The latest data release (as of this announcement) is 2005-2006, but there is no restriction on the specific data release to be used, and entries may utilize multiple data releases. A wide variety of data mining approaches are acceptable, including both supervised and unsupervised learning and the extraction of temporal association and precedence rules. Both applied and methodological entries are appropriate. Final submissions for the competition are due to the moderator by midnight, September 15, 2008, MDT (U.S. Mountain Daylight Time). Winners will be selected and recognized by an international panel of judges associated with the KDDM-WG. Winners of the contest will be invited to present their work at the AMIA Annual Symposium in a dedicated session. (No funds for travel or registration will be provided).

Contest Entry
Entries should consist of the following:

1. A written report (paper), not to exceed a maximum of five (8.5 x 11 inch) pages, including:
   • An abstract of 125 - 150 words
   • Names, academic degree(s), affiliations, and locations (city, state, and country, if international) of all authors (advisers should be added as authors).
   • Content could include sections of introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion, but is left to author discretion.
   • See the Submission Template (MS Word) for correct format. The (pdf) may be helpful.
2. Name and address of student's training education program
3. Advisor's name and contact information
4. A joint statement, signed by the student and the advisor, that identifies the student's specific contribution to the work presented, and attests that the studend prepared the paper.

Submission

Entries must be submitted as .doc or .pdf files. Submit entry to the contest moderator via e-mail:

mollie.poynton@nurs.utah.edu

. The deadline is midnight, September 15, 2008, MDT.

Useful Links

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
American Medical Informatics Association, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Working Group
2007 Data Mining Competition, Winning Entries

Frequently Asked Questions

• When is the final work due for submission to the competition?
  Final submissions for the competition are due to the Moderator by September 15, 2008

• I will be a student again Aug 1. Would I be eligible to participate?
  Yes, this competition is open to AMIA student members attending the 2008 Annual Symposium registered before the meeting begins on November 8, 2008. To become a student member, you must satisfy conditions shown at http://www2.amia.org/mbrcenter/mbrshp/student.asp.