I’m a doctor (GP) in a richly diverse part of South London, and I’m currently doing a part-time Master’s at the University of Cambridge in Healthcare data informatics, innovation and commercialisation. I’ve been intrigued by data from when I started collecting my own lifestyle data and realised first hand the power it wields to change lifestyle behaviours, and through that, health outcomes. I’m new to the data science space, and feel that there is a lack of clinicians with informatics & data science knowledge. I believe with more clinicians with this knowledge, we could see more novel community-based clinical research. In addition whilst there is a wealth of data broadly within healthcare, there is a paucity of data from certain groups to include ethnic minorities. I hope that by having data scientists from widely diverse backgrounds, this may help facilitate research with these groups. There is also a relative lack of data on people’s lifestyle habits. I hope that by doing this internship it will enable me to have practical knowledge beyond the theory I’m currently learning, that will enable me to perform high quality clinical research in the above areas.
