LEXINGTON, Va., Sept. 15, 2025—Virginia Military Institute cadets enrolled in the economics and business analytics class taught by Col. Barry Cobb, professor in the Department of Economics and Business, heard an award winning presentation by two juniors from Roanoke County’s Hidden Valley High School (HVHS).

Madison Salinas and Alishba Sofi are both members of the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) at HVHS. DECA is an international association that prepares high school students for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management through hands-on activities, competitions, and educational programs. The club holds three competitions during the academic year: district, state, and international. For the state event held in Richmond, Salinas and Sofi were tasked to find a way to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into a business. Because the girls had heard many stories of long wait times in some emergency rooms, they decided to write a proposal to shorten wait times and improve patient outcomes, and collaborated with Carilion Memorial Hospital Emergency Department (CMHED) to create a machine learning model. They researched health care departments nationwide and found AI self-check-in kiosks increased efficiency. Salinas and Sofi proposed installing self-check-in kiosks at CMHED for patients who enter with minor medical problems. In addition, the CMHED triage nurse would enter the patient’s vital signs into the AI system to corroborate the diagnosis. Salinas and Sofi also found that the AI system would help reduce human mental fatigue, reduce triage repetition and errors, and save money after the initial investment. At the state competition, the girls earned second place, and went on to present their project at the international competition in Orlando, Florida.   

Cobb was impressed by the girls’ presentation. “Madi and Alishba’s project with Carilion Clinic went through a very detailed model planning and discovery process to identify a specific problem where decision-making could be improved with machine learning models: the classification of emergency room patients into triage levels. I wanted the cadets to see a realistic example of the process an organization goes through to identify a problem where a data analytics model can improve customer service and financial outcomes. My class will now work on a case study where they take example data from a hospital and create a model that classifies hypothetical patients into severity levels based on vital signs, demographic information, and medical history,” Cobb explained.

Andrew Jones ’26, an economics and business major at VMI, said the girls’ presentation applied to what Cobb has been teaching the cadets in class. “The scaled 1-5 triage matrix they used is a categorical variable that is similar to what we are learning, where we sort data into categories to analyze it further. The girls were using predictors like ER waiting room times, online reviews, and general health care provider mental wellbeing to figure out how to reach certain levels of target variables, which is what we use the Python coding language to do.” Following graduation, Jones plans for a career in financial advising.

Marianne Hause
Communications & Marketing
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE