Matt is a consultant in oncology and an academic at Imperial College London. Caroline is a GP trainee and an education fellow at Imperial College London. Having experienced first hand the advantages of computational medicine they now run a short training course for medics, teaching them the basics of coding in Python. In this interview, they talk about what they do and what they have found pushing medicine in the NHS forward with code. Check out their website [link].
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Really interesting discussion around data being locked up and not easily available for research. Perhaps this requires greater dialogue with patients. If patients and their healthcare teams assume that this data could be used for research purposes and actively consent to it, naturally the systems should evolve to allow easier access to this data. Granted, it’s unlikely that research is at the top of everyone’s minds at the point of care. One of my clinical teachers once told me that you should think about who your audience is when recording any data on patients. I think there’s a role here for clinicians to think more widely about the wider benefit of all of this data and we should encourage our colleagues and peers to engage in discussions around the topic.
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Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I agree. The exciting thing is that not many people are doing it. So by Peter Thiel philosophy, there are easy wins in doing this. There’s also the IT and manager departments that you have to worry about. Instead of trying to do something new, a lot of them just see “RISK…. DATA BREACH” and don’t even try to understand what’s going on. Instead, just block and keep safe. If you can set up a data monitoring pipeline, you’re on to a winner.
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