The Addiction Data Anomaly

Anomaly. Noun. Something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.

Anomalies are important to identify in a data set. They can skew your results, but they can also highlight a critical point.

Over the last year, going to conferences on data science and meeting dozens of people in the data world, I'm finding I am the anomaly. I've met people working in nearly every industry... but have failed to met another person with a focus on addiction or mental health.

Positively, this means I'm intriguing and people want to hear about our work at Face It TOGETHER. Negatively, this means that the nation's number one health care challenge has very few data experts, practitioners, and quality research.

This really has to change.