Care provider uses automated machine learning in healthcare

Back in 2016, Nathan Patrick Taylor, then a clinical informatics consultant for post-acute care provider Symphony Care Network, was skeptical of automated machine learning in healthcare. The technology, still considered new today, was all but unknown four years ago. Automated machine learning had a "mystique" to it, Taylor said, with vendors claiming it could expedite the building and deploying machine learning models by automating time-consuming processes. Some people assume that it can completely automate the creation of machine learning models, removing the need for a data scientist entirely, he said. But he thought that was unrealistic, so, when a colleague texted him to check out a DataRobot booth at a conference, Taylor wasn't sure what to expect. "I rolled my eyes," he said, skeptical that DataRobot, then a four-year-old startup vendor of automated machine learning, likely couldn't accurately automate what a data scientist does.