Working with CSC as an NHS STP trainee

25 August 2021

So, three months of my rotation in the Clinical Scientific Computing (CSC) department have passed as if it was one day, and here I am, writing a blog (my first one). I came to the CSC during my first year of the STP in Clinical Bioinformatics (Genomics) training. My expectations when starting my rotation were not high, considering that almost all staff that do not have direct patient contact still work remotely because of COVID-19.

I spent the first 8 days reading around documentation relating to the application of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning (AI/ML) within the NHS, getting to know the team within the CSC and learning how to retrieve and anonymise data from PACS. The CSC team is a relatively new within the Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust whose mission is to find or develop AI technologies for the benefit of patients. It was a privilege to witness and contribute to the implementation of the first tool within the Trust by the CSC team called Innersight3D. This tool generates 3D models from CT and MRI scans, which will improve surgery planning, particularly in complex cases.

I found the CSC team to be very supportive and responsive to any questions I had, and I felt like a team member. I was able to contribute to other projects as well. For example, I developed and deployed several python packages that will facilitate the CSC team in future projects. One of these I created for searching and converting DICOM images to JPEG and the second one for creating and viewing project description files from the command line. Finally, I started to work on a project that required retrieving a large amount of data from the Electronic Patient Records to support an AI project related to Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging. During this project, I could explore some aspects of research bias related to patient age and ethnicity.

In general, I have improved my programming skills in python, which will help me in my future work in the Genetics department. Furthermore, being exposed to another area of the Trust has given me a better idea of the wide variety of work that Clinical Scientists can perform in the NHS.

The NSHCS has revised the curriculum for STP in Clinical Bioinformatics (Genomics) for trainees starting in 2022. As a result of the changes, the STPs from my speciality will not have to complete a rotation in Medical Physics anymore. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend the CSC team for an elective, which I believe will significantly enhance the trainee’s perspective of the emerging roles of AI in patient care.

I would like to thank Anil Mistry and Dijana Vilic for supervising me and monitoring my progress with my projects and Haris Shuaib for welcoming me to the CSC for three months. I wish the CSC team further success with their 50+ other AI projects actively in development for implementation at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust. Good luck!