Health

SSI Fellow attends the H3D Symposium in South Africa and tells us about the role research software plays in public health and fighting infectious diseases in Africa.
The Software Sustainability Institute is excited to announce its involvement in three successful bids to the UKRI Innovation Scholars: Data Science Training in Health and Bioscience initiative. The programme’s key objective is to produce training opportunities for researchers in areas ranging from bioinformatics to the social sciences, to give them the self-confidence and skills to manage and analyse their data. 
Data Science for Doctors, developed by the Software Sustainability Institute’s Fellow Steve Harris, is a programme based on The Carpentries’ Data Carpentry aimed at teaching health care professionals basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data.
By Gabriella Rustici, Associate Director of Training at HDR UK. A shortage of statistical and computational skills [1] is well recognised in the health care sector and advances in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence [2] (AI) will create an even greater skill mismatch in the future.

By Simon Choppin, Software Sustainability Institute Fellow and Research Fellow, Sheffield Hallam University.

Developments in technology and software are often accompanied by cohorts of enthusiastic developers and engineers who are convinced by its revolutionary potential. However, new technology often requires careful nurturing before it truly changes the way we do things – a number of things have to be working in harmony before the revolution can take place. If you push too hard, and in the wrong direction, things can veer off course and never recover. I…

By Shafi Ahmed, Colorectal Cancer Lead at Barts Health NHS Trust and Associate Dean at Queen Mary University of London.

This article is part of our series: a day in the software life, in which we ask researchers from all disciplines to discuss the tools that make their research possible.

Over the last few centuries, surgery has traditionally been taught as an apprenticeship with students clamouring around the operating table to glimpse a view of both surgical technique and clinical anatomy.

Not much as changed over this time, even now, medical students will…

By Andrew Bastawrous, Research Fellow in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

This article is part of our series: a day in the software life, in which we will be asking researchers from all disciplines to discuss the tools that make their research possible.

Although 80% of blindness is avoidable, diagnosing it can be very expensive. Peek is an app that helps community health workers to perform a comprehensive eye examination with only an Android phone and…

By Eve Macharia, Specialist Registrar and clinical researcher in Paediatric Surgery, Institute of Child Health.

Eve is the project lead on the TARDIS team, where she coordinated the development of an app for the study of gastro-esophageal reflux (GOR) in children. The app, called TARDIS:GOR, is currently undergoing beta testing at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. We asked Eve to pass on her top tips on developing apps for the healthcare sector. 

1.…

By Eve Macharia, Specialist Registrar and clinical researcher in Paediatric Surgery, Institute of Child Health.

Apps are a rapidly evolving and expanding example of software-as-a-service. In the past ten years, there has been an explosion in the number of health-related apps available to the consumer. Currently, the NHS apps library hosts 81 apps - these must pass the NHS review approval process to be deemed safe. Even as a healthcare professional and consumer of health on…

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