On Feb. 10, the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) organized its first Health Data Science Day, convening speakers and attendees from across UC Davis and its health research partners in California. This interdisciplinary event highlighted the latest innovations, applications and training in health data sciences.
Health Data Science Day
"We are committed to raising data science literacy in our community and among our researchers," said event organizer Nicholas Anderson, director of Informatics Research in the Public Health Sciences department at UC Davis Health. "This annual event is organized to bring together people from different backgrounds and levels of expertise to explore collaborations and opportunities and to discuss the challenges of working with health data."
Capacity building in health data-science
The participants learned at hands-on workshops on observational outcomes in data science (led by Brian Paciotti) and on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its use in health data (led by Pamela Reynolds from DataLab). They attended presentations of top researchers and networked with some of the leading experts on health data science.
They listened to the keynote speaker Cora Han, chief health data officer at the University of California Office of the President, present on data governance in health and research and the importance of trust and transparency in working with health data.
"We want to lead in artificial intelligence and data sciences," said David Lubarsky, vice chancellor of human health sciences and CEO of UC Davis Health. "That means leading in terms of data integrity and building interdisciplinary teams across our university to solve important health care problems, like predicting who needs our help and what will work when we do intervene."
The event included a health data "farmer's market" showcasing various UC Davis data science resources, tools and centers.
Allison Brashear, dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine, recognized these centers and labs for the great support they provide to UC Davis researchers. "The CTSC is an interdisciplinary resource center, and its role is pivotal in bridging education and research," Brashear said. "Besides teaching our young faculty about research methods, it's helping our efforts to offer all our patients the opportunity to participate in clinical trials."
Another important resource supporting the work of researchers in data science is the Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research (CEDAR). This center advances computational data science and translates complex data into powerful solutions that can change health.
