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. 2025 Jul;40(5):1237-1242.
doi: 10.1177/02676591241291946. Epub 2024 Oct 11.

Health data science course for clinicians: Time to bridge the skills gap?

Hafiz Naderi  1   2 , Yu-Hsuen Yang  3 , Patricia B Munroe  1 , Steffen E Petersen  1   2 , Mark Westwood  2 , Nay Aung  1   2
Affiliations

Health data science course for clinicians: Time to bridge the skills gap?

Hafiz Naderi et al. Perfusion. 2025 Jul.

Abstract

BackgroundData science skills are highly relevant for clinicians working in an era of big data in healthcare. However, these skills are not routinely taught, representing a growing unmet educational need. This education report presents a structured short course that was run to teach clinicians data science and the lessons learnt.MethodsA 1-day introductory course was conducted within a tertiary hospital in London. It consisted of lectures followed by facilitated pair programming exercises in R, an object-oriented programming language. Feedback was collated and participant responses were graded using a Likert scale.ResultsThe course was attended by 20 participants. The majority of participants (69%) were in higher speciality cardiology training. While more than half of the participants (56%) received prior training in statistics either through formal taught programmes (e.g., a Master's degree) or online courses, the participants reported several barriers to expanding their skills in data science due to limited programming skills, lack of dedicated time, training opportunities and awareness. After the short course, there was a significant increase in participants' self-rated confidence in using R for data analysis (mean response; before the course: 1.69 ± 1.0, after the course: 3.2 ± 0.9, p = .0005) and awareness of the capabilities of R (mean response; before the course: 2.1 ± 0.9, after the course: 3.6 ± 0.7, p = .0001, on a 5-point Likert scale).ConclusionThis proof-of-concept study demonstrates that a structured short course can effectively introduce data science skills to clinicians and supports future educational initiatives to integrate data science teaching into medical education.

Keywords: R programming; big data; data science; data science course; health data science; medical education.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Collated feedback from the Health Data Science for Clinicians course. SpR: Specialist Registrar; CT, Core trainee, FY, Foundation year trainee.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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