Clinical Data Science For Non-Data Scientists (Part 1)

By OpenClinica

Einstein is often attributed to saying, “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem.” In that spirit, we begin by defining what we mean by clinical data science, at least for the purposes of this blog series. CDS is the application of data science to medical and therapeutic decision-making, including research applications. Simple, right? So far, so good?

Well, now comes the hard part: defining “data science” itself as even seasoned professionals can be inconsistent with terminology. Is a given example best characterized as data science, or data analytics, or perhaps business intelligence? Do you need a data visualization expert? Perhaps we should just give everything to a statistician and hold our breath? These distinctions are more than purely academic, as finding the right person with the right skillset can seriously impact your outcome.