Teaching data science to medical trainees.

Abstract

Data science broadly refers to the endeavour of extracting knowledge from data. There is currently an explosion of data in health care, from the use of electronic health care record systems to complex datasets such as genomics. These scenarios present tremendous opportunities for health professionals— including doctors, nurses, medical students and allied health staff— to innovate their practice by harnessing, analysing and extracting insights from data. Furthermore, understanding data science will allow health professionals to be critical users of the literature. Reflecting the need for future doctors to be familiar with data science methods, our university (University College London) recently introduced a module titled ‘Doctor As Data Scientist’. This programme aims to educate medical students about critical appraisal and data science in medicine, and there are calls for more universities to implement a similar approach.1 There is also an increasing demand amongst medical students for data science skills to be incorporated into their training.2 However, several challenges remain in teaching data science to medical students: