Hardin MBA Blog

 This week I watched this video on WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/travel-guides/how-ai-is-transforming-air-traffic-control-towers/1E2C984E-F047-47F7-B1AB-1F7D1104F9E1?mod=Searchresults_pos15&page=1 The video shows how digital AI traffic control towers are changing operations at Heathrow Airport in London. The system is powered by algorithms that identifies plans and then overlay satellite information, and can function in clouds or even "see through" buildings, improvements over human air traffic control skills.  This made me think about what other operations could be improved and made more efficient using AI. I work in healthcare, and one area of inefficiency is the process of consulting specialists for a patient. Currently, it works like this: The patient's primary team identifies a problem that they don't have the knowledge or skills to address (a mental health need, an infection, etc.)  The primary team identifies the best specialist service to consult ...

 It's 2024, so we can't have a blog post about finance without talking about the hottest financial craze: Girl Math. For those who have yet to hear, Girl Math is a tongue-in-cheek method for financially analyzing purchase options and future values of money that uses cognitive gymnastics to make the preferred purchase decision look financially responsible. If you want to learn more, you can read about it here . An example of girl math is that if I return $100 of Amazon purchases, that means I now have $100 "to spend" on new throw pillows for the house! Girl Math!  Image from Reader's Digest This blog post is part satire, part math. It's math-tire.  Is it possible, though, that Girl Math might sometimes be right? Today I'm valuing a boring, respectable purchase of a Series EE Government Bond against what I actually want to buy: several new outfits from Ann Taylor for work. Let's dive in. The outfit in question from anntaylor.com The current Series EE Bon...

 This week, I read this WSJ article about suicide rates during and after the pandemic: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/americans-suicide-highest-level-2022-02eb10ea?mod=healthcare_more_article_pos44  This blog post is a long one, so bear with me. At the end of this article, you'll see why mental health care is so hard to access and how medical systems seeking to reduce their costs should counterintuitively hire more psychologists, not less, even though psychologists don't generate enough revenue to cover their  salaries and benefits.  Image from PlanStreet The article discusses ongoing populations at risk of suicide (older, white men), and how suicide rates are finally declining for younger people. Importantly though, the article points out that mental health care - which was hard to access before COVID - is now even harder to find. This begs the question, how can it be with all the increased attention on mental health and increased need for mental health ...

 Pricing Strategy: How Much Would You Pay to Spit in a Cup? Image from Cancer.Net This week, I read about the fall in stock value for 23andMe, a mail-away genetic testing service that provides insights both on genetic ancestry data but also genes associated with health. I read this article: https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/23andme-anne-wojcicki-healthcare-stock-913468f4?mod=healthcare_news_article_pos4  Both my husband and I have taken 23andMe tests, signing up for the highest membership level, but only for one year. We also bought the kits on sale. For us, it was worth it, but as the article points out, the key issue with the 23andMe pricing strategy is that each individual only needs to take the test once. Genes don't change over time, so once customers have had fun assessing their ancestry profiles and heave a sigh of relief that they're not BRCA2 carriers, there's really not much point in continuing to pay for a subscription.  The article points out that at ...