Midwest Healthcare Management Conference
Join the conversation at the 2025 Midwest Healthcare Conference
This year’s conference will explore how to improve healthcare access across all settings—from primary and preventive care to emergency and inpatient services. Key sessions will examine:
- The role of policy and payment models in shaping equity
- How technology and AI are transforming care delivery
- Real-world strategies to close access gaps in rural and underserved communities
By bringing together perspectives from policy, operations, technology, and economics, the conference aims to drive actionable solutions that make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and effective for all.
August 22, 2025
I Hotel & Illinois Conference Center
1900 South 1st Street
Champaign, IL 61820
Providing healthcare access to a diverse population
Access to quality healthcare in the United States remains uneven. Low-income communities, racial and ethnic minorities, and rural residents often face worse health outcomes such as higher rates of chronic disease, maternal mortality, and myriad mental health challenges.
These disparities are driven by structural barriers like lack of insurance and limited healthcare infrastructure, along with broader social factors such as housing, education, and employment. Solving these challenges requires a coordinated effort across multiple sectors across policy, operations, and technology.
Dr. Bot Data Challenge
As part of the conference, we are excited to host a data challenge that invites participants to push the frontiers of large language model (LLM) development in service of a critical mission: improving how AI understands and responds to real-world medical questions. The competition invites participants (anyone from the UIUC community) to develop LLMs specifically trained to respond to patient-initiated clinical questions with clarity, accuracy, and contextual sensitivity.
The top three teams will be invited to join the organizing team as co-authors on a planned peer-reviewed publication, and will be invited to give an oral presentation at the conference. Additionally, the top three teams will earn cash awards: the first-place team will earn $1500, the second-place team will get $500, and the third-place team will receive $250.
Poster Competition: Share your work!
We invite undergraduate, graduate, and professional students with active or recently completed projects to present their work in our Poster Session. The posters need not be limited to the conference session topics, and can be focused on other topics of interest in healthcare, including clinical aspects of healthcare.
Whether you're exploring machine learning for clinical prediction, evaluating hospital throughput strategies, designing patient-centered systems, or analyzing health equity—this is your chance to showcase your insights! The deadline to submit an abstract is August 15, 2025.
Research-backed strategies to expand access
A recent comprehensive review published in Foundations and Trends in Technology, Information and Operations Management highlights the critical role healthcare operations management plays in improving outcomes and access. The paper synthesizes two decades of research and identifies operational strategies such as improved patient flow, capacity management, and equitable resource allocation as key levers for making healthcare systems more effective and inclusive.
Five years of forward-thinking healthcare solutions
Building on a proud tradition of collaboration, the 2025 Midwest Healthcare Conference marks our fifth event as a joint initiative of Gies College of Business and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Our partnership brings together unique perspectives in policy, operations, technology, and economics to deliver actionable insights that transform healthcare access and delivery.
