Professor Jing Dong: Improving Managerial Decisions with Data

Any hospital patient basically wants two things: to get well and to get out. Jing Dong is helping that happen faster. An assistant professor in the division of Decision, Risk, and Operations, Dong is at the forefront of research into improving hospitals’ operational and procedural efficiencies, from lowering admittance wait-times to speeding up discharges. “I still see a lot of exciting things to do in the healthcare domain,” Dong tells Columbia Bizcast. “I’m helping hospitals identify the costs of a lot of the operational procedures they’re running and then helping them to say, ‘Okay, if I realize there is a cost and benefit to these procedures, what would be the best way of balancing this?’” In this episode, Dong shares how her parents encouraged her to study math when she was growing up in mainland China and how now, at the Business School, she has elevated her research by partnering with professors from across the divisions. The proliferation of data and analytics is transforming the way businesses operate, she says, which is allowing leaders to make more quantitative-driven decisions. “My research horizon has also been broadened since I came here,” Dong says of joining the Business School. “It has simply improved my whole decision-making process a lot.”