Teaching Medical Students to Use Supercomputers: A Personal Reflection

Area of Science:

• Computational Biology
• Medical Informatics
• High-Performance Computing (HPC)

Background:

• The CompBioMed Centre of Excellence initiated an education and training program in 2016.
• The program's genesis was a desire to educate medical students in supercomputing.
• It involves collaboration between experimental researchers, computer scientists, clinicians, and industry partners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe refinements and delivery of the CompBioMed Education and Training Programme over six years.
• To highlight the successes and challenges in engaging clinicians and biomedical researchers with advanced computing.
• To propose solutions for integrating users with limited computing experience into petascale environments.

Main Methods:

• A holistic educational approach developed and delivered by a multidisciplinary team.
• Continuous refinement of the training program based on practical experience.
• Focus on bridging the gap between desktop computing and high-performance computing.

Main Results:

• The program has successfully engaged a diverse community of users with supercomputing.
• Significant progress has been made in training clinicians and biomedical researchers.
• Barriers to adopting advanced computing in medicine have been identified and addressed.

Conclusions:

• The CompBioMed Education and Training Programme has demonstrated the feasibility of integrating clinicians into HPC environments.
• Ongoing efforts are needed to overcome remaining challenges in computational training for medical professionals.
• Future strategies should focus on sustainable and scalable educational initiatives in biomedical computing.