The Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health‘s National Cancer Institute have devised a new program to train big data scientists as part of an effort to help improve clinical outcomes.Connie Lee, director of the Big Data Scientist Training Enhancement Program, wrote in a blog post for VA published Friday that the new initiative is meant to train “hybrid” clinical data scientists in the use of data sets, algorithms and models.
“As healthcare increasingly uses big data, we need to be sure traditional data scientists understand healthcare operations as they relate to the data they evaluate,” Lee wrote.
Under the pilot program, the clinical data scientists will collaborate with VA clinicians in medical centers located in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Texas, California and Washington.
The program currently works with academic institutions such as Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Southern California on separate projects intended to study cancer risk, myeloma and the correlation of cancer with hepatitis C.
VA and NIH also intend for BD-STEP to support the Precision Medicine Initiative research effort with the goal of transforming disease treatment methods.
