Computing for Medicine: Can We Prepare Medical Students for the Future?

Abstract

Problem Technology can transform health care; future physicians need to keep pace to ensure optimal patient care. Because future doctors are poorly prepared in computer literacy, the authors designed a computer programming certificate course. This Innovation Report describes the course and findings from a qualitative study to understand the ways it prepares medical students to use computing science and technology in medicine. Approach The 14-month Computing for Medicine certificate course (C4M, offered beginning in February 2016), University of Toronto, is comprised of hands-on workshops to introduce programming accompanied by homework exercises, seminars by computer science experts on the application of programming to medicine, and coding projects. Using purposive and maximal variation sampling, 17 students who completed the course were interviewed from April–May 2017. Thematic analysis was performed using an iterative constant comparison approach. Outcomes Participants praised the C4M as an opportunity to achieve computer literacy—including language, syntax, and fundamental computational ideas (and their application to medicine)—and acquire or strengthen algorithmic and logical thinking skills for approaching problems. They highlighted that the course illustrated linkages between computer science and medicine. Participants acknowledged a sometimes-existent chasm between producers and users of technology in medicine, recommending two-way communication between the disciplines when developing technology for use in medicine. Next Steps We recommend that medical schools consider computer literacy an essential skill to foster future collaborative computing partnerships for improved technology use by physicians and optimal patient care. We encourage further evaluation of future iterations of the C4M and similar courses.

Digital Health Training Programs for Medical Students: Scoping Review

“…Most of the studies (22/34, 65%) were published between 2010 and 2019 and were uncontrolled before-and-after studies (24/34, 71%). Other study designs reported in the included studies were case studies (5/34, 15%) [4,[36][37][38][39], controlled before-and-after studies (4/34, 12%) [19,[40][41][42], and a quasi-RCT (1/34, 3%) [43].…”

Computer Programming: Should Medical Students Be Learning It?

“…They not only identified that breaking a large problem down into smaller solvable steps was key for coding but also identified that it had uses in other parts of their lives. This was also seen in the paper detailing the University of Toronto course, which found a similarly in the students’ thinking about the course improving their approach to solving problems [14]. This has direct application in research where a big research question is often addressed by breaking it down into a series of smaller studies.…”

“…Therefore, it would be feasible to introduce teaching of basic computing skills without overloading the medical curriculum, particularly if it were to be introduced as an option. This is one of the first courses specifically designed to teach undergraduate medical students to code and is in contrast to the other published example [14], teaching students over an intense period of time rather than over 1 year. This demonstrates that there can be a variety of ways to get content into the curriculum.…”

“…This demonstrates that there can be a variety of ways to get content into the curriculum. Interestingly, the other published course also uses Python and covers similar material [14].…”

“…A recent paper from the University of Toronto teaches Python in a weekly session that runs over 1 year [13]. A course in the Netherlands ran over 2 days and aimed at teaching app building to doctors with good success [14]. However, outside medicine, there have been a number of courses aimed at teaching coding and computational thinking to nonspecialists.…”