Handbook

Computing now pervades nearly every aspect of modern life, including health care delivery and health services management. The objective of this course is to develop 'computational thinking' in health data science students, by providing you with a thorough and principled introduction to computer programming, algorithms, data structures and software engineering best practices. The ability to write clear, efficient and correct computer code is at the core of most data science practice and is a foundation skill set.

In this course, you will learn to program in the Python language through tackling health-related problems. Topics include data types, functions, data processing, simulation, software development and program testing and debugging. Theoretical principles are reinforced with extensive ‘hands-on’ coding in Python, including the NumPy and Pandas packages.

The course is accessed via www.openlearning.com. Core material will be delivered as short lectures and readings supported by interactive coding activities. Practical exercises will utilise Spyder/Jupyter Notebook documents.