Report: Thousands of Canadians Died Due to Delayed Care during COVID-19

Link: https://fee.org/articles/report-thousands-of-canadians-died-due-to-delayed-care-during-covid-19/

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Excerpt:

A new report commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) looks at the broader health impacts of COVID-19 in Canada. The November report, called A Struggling System, explores a range of growing problems, from mental health issues to substance abuse and deteriorating social determinants of health. Sadly, the report also confirms a fact that many have suspected since the beginning: that delays in care have led to thousands of preventable deaths.

“Although it is not surprising that more Canadians died in 2020 than in a typical year,” the authors write, “the number of excess deaths was greater than can be explained by COVID-19 alone. While there may be several drivers of these excess deaths, delayed or missed care due to shutdowns of services and lack of sufficient capacity in overburdened health systems may be a contributing factor.”

After analyzing the data, the authors estimated that delayed and missed health care contributed to more than 4,000 excess deaths not related to COVID-19 between August and December 2020. Needless to say, the total number of preventable deaths over the pandemic to date is likely much higher.

Author(s): Patrick Carroll

Publication Date: 8 Dec 2021

Publication Site: FEE

Emerging Technologies and their Impact on Actuarial Science

Link: https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2021/2021-emerging-technologies-report.pdf

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This research evaluates the current state and future outlook of emerging technologies on the actuarial profession
over a three-year horizon. For the purpose of this report, a technology is considered to be a practical application of
knowledge (as opposed to a specific vendor) and is considered emerging when the use of the particular technology
is not already widespread across the actuarial profession. This report looks to evaluate prospective tools that
actuaries can use across all aspects and domains of work spanning Life and Annuities, Health, P&C, and Pensions in
relation to insurance risk.
We researched and grouped similar technologies together for ease of reading and understanding. As a result, we
identified the six following technology groups:

  1. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
  2. Business Intelligence Tools and Report Generators
  3. Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) / Data Integration and Low-Code Automation Platforms
  4. Collaboration and Connected Data
  5. Data Governance and Sharing
  6. Digital Process Discovery (Process Mining / Task Mining)

Author(s):

Nicole Cervi, Deloitte
Arthur da Silva, FSA, ACIA, Deloitte
Paul Downes, FIA, FCIA, Deloitte
Marwah Khalid, Deloitte
Chenyi Liu, Deloitte
Prakash Rajgopal, Deloitte
Jean-Yves Rioux, FSA, CERA, FCIA, Deloitte
Thomas Smith, Deloitte
Yvonne Zhang, FSA, FCIA, Deloitte

Publication Date: October 2021

Publication Site: Society of Actuaries, SOA Research Institute

Predictably inaccurate: The prevalence and perils of bad big data

Link: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-21/analytics-bad-data-quality.html

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More than two-thirds of survey respondents stated that the third-party data about them was only 0 to 50 percent correct as a whole. One-third of respondents perceived the information to be 0 to 25 percent correct.

Whether individuals were born in the United States tended to determine whether they were able to locate their data within the data broker’s portal. Of those not born in the United States, 33 percent could not locate their data; conversely, of those born in the United States, only 5 percent had missing information. Further, no respondents born outside the United States and residing in the country for less than three years could locate their data.

The type of data on individuals that was most available was demographic information; the least available was home data. However, even if demographic information was available, it was not all that accurate and was often incomplete, with 59 percent of respondents judging their demographic data to be only 0 to 50 percent correct. Even seemingly easily available data types (such as date of birth, marital status, and number of adults in the household) had wide variances in accuracy.

Author(s): John Lucker, Susan K. Hogan, Trevor Bischoff

Publication Date: 31 July 2017

Publication Site: Deloitte

What went wrong with America’s $44 million vaccine data system?

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/

Excerpt:

The chaos of the vaccine rollout in the US has been well documented: states receiving half their expected doses; clinics canceling first shots because of unreliable supplies; people endlessly hitting “Refresh” on sign-up websites or lining up outside clinics without an appointment, hoping for a spare shot. 

The CDC saw this coming.

“VAMS was intended to fill a need that states and jurisdictions were not equipped to do themselves,” says Noam Arzt, the president of HLN Consulting, which helps build health information systems. 

Author: Cat Ferguson

Publication Date: 30 January 2021

Publication Site: MIT Technology Review