Data Science and Medical Image Analysis
Human health conditions have been a significant global concern. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), the mortality rate of Cardiovascular diseases is 17.9 Million per year,
over 1 billion people are hypertensive,
about 422 million people have diabetes and Breast Cancer is predicted to be 3 Million per year by 2050.
Majority of these diseases are prevalent in low and middle-income countries like Nigeria.
Manual diagnosis of diseases could lead to wrong diagnosis, delayed diagnosis and also subjectivity.
With shifting disease patterns in Africa,
significant deficits in Medical Personnel to help Diagnose conditions are anticipated.
The automation of these Diagnostic tasks using Computational methods will help close
the projected care gap. Currently,
there is a critical need for Medical A.I. Data Scientists to train, curate,
and maintain these computational Medical tools.
Development of computational techniques for medical diagnosis and biomarkers requires expertise
in data science, medical science and software development.
Experts in these fields and other allied fields are making great efforts in the developed world,
but similar efforts are very poor in Nigeria because of limited expertise in data science
and its application in medical image analysis.
This gap in manpower in data science in Nigeria motivated
the formation of DATICAN team and the focus is to build capacity
in Data Science and Medical Image Analysis.
Solving manpower problem in Data Science in Nigeria
DATICAN was formed by 4 Universities,
Lagos State University (LASU),
University of Chicago,
University of Ibadan and
Redeemer's University.
The program director and lead principal investigator for DATICAN is
Professor Benjamin ARIBISALA of
Lagos State University (LASU),
Other principal investigators of DATICAN are
Professor Funmilayo OLOPADE (Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine) of the
University of Chicago,
Professor Alexander PEARSON of the
University of Chicago,
Professor Abiodun ADEWUYA of
Lagos State College of Medicine,
Lagos State University (LASU),
Professor Godwin OGBOLE of the
College of Medicine,
University of Ibadan,
Professor Steffen SAMMET of the
University of Chicago,
Dr. Adenike ADENIJI-SOFOLUWE of the
College of Medicine,
University of Ibadan,
Professor Samson AREKETE of the
Redeemer's University, and
Dr. Ravi MADDURI of
Argonne National Lab. and
University of Chicago.