Meharry Medical College, is one of the oldest and largest historically black academic health science centers in the US to educate physicians, dentists, researchers, and health policy experts. It was founded by Samuel Meharry and his four brothers in 1876 in Nashville, Tennessee as the first-ever medical college for African-Americans. Meharry provides a medical school, dental school, graduate school, and the recently launched School of Applied Computational Sciences. It is also home to the Center for Health Policy and produces the public health journal, known as the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Undeserved. The College receives more than 10,000 applications for admissions to all degree programs.
Analytics Insight spoke to Fortune Mhlanga, the founding Dean of the Meharry's School of Applied Computational Sciences, to enlighten us on the importance of a Data Science degree in this data-driven environment, to transform the healthcare system for the betterment of society.
The mission of the School of Applied Computational Sciences is to advance scholarship in key domains of computational sciences by innovating through academic excellence and impactful research, connecting to key healthcare industries, businesses, influencers as well as thought leaders in the areas of computational science and serving society at large.
The School became the fourth school of Meharry Medical College in February 2021. It extends Meharry's immense impact in healthcare and public health by applying Data Science in research as well as integrating it into and also through its academic programs that equip future Black data scientists.
The Meharry's School of Applied Computational Sciences offers a Master's of Science in Data Science and a Master's of Science in Biomedical Data Science. It also offers graduate certificates in Data Science and Biomedical Data Science, as well as a SAS Academic Specialization in Data Wrangling. These programs are held in online mode.
In addition to encompassing all aspects of data science, the academic program is built for the practical experience of participants and emphasizes the development of communication and presentation skills that are necessary for a team-based data-driven economic environment. There are interactive classes to ensure a better understanding from the faculty, course materials, especially classmates. The coursework concludes with a comprehensive real-world and industry-type capstone that is oriented towards the domain of interest.
Students in both master's programs learn in-demand skills to be successful in their data science career— computer programming languages such as Python, R, SQL, and SAS as well as data collection, aggregation, analysis, pattern recognition, and visualization.
The M.S. Data Science curriculum includes all important aspects of data science for the participants such as mainstream computer programming for data science, statistical inference and decision modeling, Big data management and analytics, artificial intelligence and computational machine learning, natural language processing, and text analytics, predictive modeling and analytics, visualization and unstructured data analysis, data conscientiousness and ethics of data science.
The curriculum of the M.S. Biomedical Data Science includes specialized tracks in precision medicine informatics and population health informatics as well as important aspects such as computational software engineering, GIS algorithms for healthcare analytics, biostatistics, and all other subjects from the M.S. Data Science.
Fortune Mhlanga, is the Founding Dean of the School of Applied Computational Sciences who oversees the strategies and execution of student and faculty recruitment, academic programs, industry, and research partnerships as well as growth. Being an experienced advocate in the computational sciences space, Mhlanga led the effort to establish the College of Computing and Technology at Lipscomb University and developed similar programs at other institutions such as Faulkner University and the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre in Zimbabwe.
The programs are offered online with a blend of recorded lectures and interactive class discussions. Students still receive practical experiences with these additional flexibilities. The School of Applied Computational Sciences has established relationships with Nashville's dynamic healthcare, tech, and business communities that open doors for students to gain hands-on experience by solving real-life complex problems and partnering with faculty on research projects.
The students get full exposure to the real-life work environment by solving complicated sets of problems presented by partners in Nashville's healthcare, tech, and business communities. The school also encourages students to work with faculty on some important research projects to have a better understanding of the real-life data science work ecosystem.
The research and development enterprise of the School of Applied Computational Sciences partners with Meharry Medical College faculty and the members of the healthcare, technological as well as business communities to develop impactful and socially responsible scientific knowledge and practical technologies to enhance the standard of living of the society.
There are immense contributions from the school to improve healthcare by applying Data Science. The school is representing Meharry on the COVID-19 Consortium of HCA Healthcare and Academia for Research Generation (CHARGE). They join faculty from Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Institute, and many other institutions for research on HCA's extensive COVID-19 patient datasets to pursue improvements in COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment options.
The School is leveraging a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to identify measles rash and develop a smartphone application to assist physicians and patients in the diagnosis of the disease. They are also supporting work to examine the social determinants of health with an aim to refine the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to inform the understanding of COVID-19 disparities and the potential influence on vaccine acceptance.
The School of Applied Computational Sciences is applying Data Science to data from mHealth apps for early detection and prediction of disease efficiency. The streaming data can provide a health graph of an individual in almost real-time after combining it with clinical data. The information is highly valuable to healthcare decision-making processes by providing early insights into complex life-threatening diseases, proactive treatment, highly personalized care and is useful for critical care patients and in emergency situations.
Data science is an in-demand profession with rewarding salaries for employees who have sufficient knowledge of programming languages, data collection and engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistical inference, and data visualization. Data science is transforming multiple industries across the world and making drug discovery quicker, cheaper, and more effective. There is a remarkable improvement in personalized medicine and treatment. That being said, data science is a great discipline to study that creates unlimited opportunities to enhance society and to experience a successful career.
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