The Data Science and Health (DASH) Cluster is building a system to link health research data in BC by enhancing the availability and use of health data to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, and enable computational tools that speed the discovery of new knowledge, optimizing health outcomes for all BC residents.
Data science is transforming healthcare. Medicine is by its nature data-intense, generating monstrous amounts of information from diagnostic testing and clinical encounters, but these data are frequently siloed and inaccessible to the health research community. The fragmented health care and data landscape in BC make accessing health data for research complex and time-consuming. DASH envisions the development of a harmonized data ecosystem in BC that can accommodate multimodal and multidimensional data.
The DASH Cluster is focused on 5 main objectives:
- Identifying UBC health data assets that can be cataloged and made accessible through the development of a metadata commons
- Streamlining health data access across jurisdictions in British Columbia by engaging academic and health authority partners
- Strengthening our data analytics capabilities through platform development and resource sharing
- Enhancing data literacy through the development of new education programs, graduate-level courses, and continuing professional development offerings in collaboration with UBC Data Science programs and Research Excellence Clusters
- Accelerating clinical and commercial innovation by bridging the gap between health data and analytics infrastructure, and supporting novel digital health technologies.