Course summary

This postgraduate degree will build on your existing quantitative knowledge to give you the expertise in statistical analysis, computer science and health research that you will need to become a data scientist in the healthcare sector. You will develop a thorough grounding in computing and the statistical methods underpinning modern day data science, but with a focus on understanding, applying and adapting it to real life problems in the health domain. You will develop computing skills required to manage and explore big health datasets, to gain insight into, and inform, health research. Your analytic skills will be developed on real medical data sets, using statistical and computational software such as R and Python. Alongside this, you will develop your knowledge base of cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence methods, learning how they can be harnessed to answer clinical questions, bringing together the power and potential of computational analytics, statistical thinking, and medical research, to improve health. An important factor in the success of a practising data scientist is the ability to communicate with others. To develop these skills, you will work on a mini-project and will be introduced to consultancy skills and a wide range of other professional skills throughout the course. This mini-project will involve managing, exploring and analysing data arising from real problems and data sets and presenting a report on the findings. This will prepare you for the independent Health Data Science project as well as developing important professional and communication skills.