New centre launched to analyse big data in the health sector

 

 

 

An ultramodern high-tech centre of excellence in bioinformatics and data intensive sciences has been launched at the Infectious Disease Institute (IDI) Makerere to help them tackle the challenges of big data analysis and cross border connections.

 

Big data refers to extremely large data sets that is analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.

 

The centre, will on top of creating a virtual world where scientist across the globe can collaborate on research projects virtually, offer graduate training for students interested in pursuing bioinformatics programming, population genomics, big data generation technologies and molecular biology, among others.

 

The centre, second in Africa, will also serve scientists in the East African region. The first one was launched in 2015 at the University of Science and Technology in Bamako, Mali.

 

Dr. Andrew Kambugu, the Executive Director of IDI said that they will allow scientists from across the globe to take sabbaticals at the centre to do their researches.

 

The centre consists of three high-tech equipped laboratories which include a virtual reality training room for the latest 3-D pedagogical approaches and a tele-learning centre which will allow students attend training across the globe in a fast paced environment through a fast internet.

 

The other is a data analytical lab where all huge scientific data will be handled.

 

Kambugu said that the centre is coming at a time when scientists are generating a lot of data but do not have the capacity to break it down and analyse it.

 

Micheal Tartakovsky, the chief information officer of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), also noted that the centre comes at a time when research in Africa is becoming more complicated with studies in healthcare becoming more dependent on the use of computers to analyse the vast amount of data being generated.

 

He said the centre will equip African researchers with the necessary tools and expertise to conduct high quality researches.

 

"It will provide the greatest resource for Makerere students to study bioinformatics. It's connected to global scientific and academic community and this will allow students to engage with researchers around the world in real time," he said.

 

Colette Marcellin, the US deputy chief of mission, said the centre will help scientists come with quality and ground breaking researches in some of the emerging diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Ebola and TB, which are ravaging African countries.

 

"High-tech computing and Data analysis are essential towards the efforts to develop drugs vaccines and proper facilities needed to combat such diseases in Africa and the rest of the world," she said.

 

She said the centre will help improve the understanding of the nature of infectious diseases and this will result in the collection of quality data.

 

The centre was built through money generated in a private-public partnership between IDI, college of Health Sciences and Computing, and the US government's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the office of cyber infrastructure and computational biology.

 

During the function, held at IDI on Thursday, Prof. Moses Joloba, the Dean of the school of Biomedical Sciences, also revealed that their first batch for the programs in bioinformatics will start in August this year.

 

He said the masters and doctoral programs have already been approved by the National Council for Higher education, and the students are expected to contribute to computation research.

 

However, Prof. Sam Luboga, the IDI board chairperson, noted that as the computational capacity of scientists is being developed, the human capacity should not be neglected.

 

"Do not use technology as an excuse to make humans redundant and cut jobs. When you do so, you create misery," he said.