New IT Lab offers UMCG researchers support in the field of data science and IT

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UMCG's Data Science Center in Health (DASH) is launching the IT-Lab, a knowledge centre that will support healthcare researchers in innovative projects in data science and IT.

DASH brings together experts in data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and eHealth and already has a successful community called the Machine Learning Lab (MLL). The IT Lab will serve as support for projects and solutions, as well as a knowledge centre where supply and demand in IT and data science are matched.

Enhancing Data Science Infrastructure

A major goal of the IT Lab is to improve data science infrastructure. Researchers are increasingly using powerful IT facilities due to the increasing size and complexity of research datasets. Proper use of IT platforms, including privacy and security measures, is key. Currently, researchers sometimes work with external IT systems, which complicates management and may lead to non-compliance with UMCG privacy and security guidelines, ultimately resulting in an increased risk of data breaches. The IT Lab will therefore provide IT facilities for data science applications, including high-performance workstations and facilitating public cloud services In the near future, these facilities will be further developed through public/private partnerships.

Bridging Theory and Practice

Another goal of the IT Lab is to build expertise in data science and artificial intelligence in healthcare. To this end, the lab will develop a learning environment where participants can experiment with programming, algorithms and enriching information from medical images. Bachelor and Master students from different programmes can use this learning environment to supplement their theoretical knowledge with practical assignments.

The IT Lab will start during the autumn. For more information or questions, please contact DASH at [email protected].