Deciding what to focus on
Next steps on my medical machine learning journey
For the past couple of years, my rough modus operandi has been something along the lines of… “to build deep technical skills and understanding in machine learning (and computer programming more broadly)”.
The rough end-goal has been to become a doctor who can build machine learning models, and thus be uniquely-positioned to incorporate my medical insight when building them.
I feel this has served me well until now. But it’s also low-resolution.
Building “a machine learning model to be applied in medicine” could mean many things. There are many types of machine learning models and there are many medical problems.
I’ve decided I’m going to start switching my focus towards more specific areas and use-cases, and really hone in where there is the most value to be had.
To do this, I’m planning to do a series of ‘deep dives’ over the next several months, with the intention of iteratively moving towards the areas that I will devote wider attention.
After a quick, rough brainstorm, the following areas have made it onto my initial list for exploration:
Facilitating incorporation of machine learning into healthcare (perhaps predictable if you’d followed this newsletter for a while.. 😉)
Biological information processing (bioinformatics, drug discovery)
Intelligent knowledge management (extracting information from research, personal knowledge management)
I have various ideas within each of this, which you can see here if interested. I’ve also thought about some tentative next steps in each area.
This isn’t a complete list, just a first draft. I’m planning to update and grow this over time, and to proactively reach out to people for suggestions and deep conversations in coming months.
That being said, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear them!
The Machine Learning for Healthcare Course
I’ve finally launched the full ‘Machine Learning for Healthcare’ Course on my website. A lot of work went into this, and I’m pretty proud of it. I’m hoping this helps more medics take deep dives into machine learning.
My favourite things this week:
(1) A Careers Guide website that encourages you to think big.
(2) A blog post about the first Medical AI reimbursement model in MediCare.
(3) A personal website: Maxwell Flitton used to be a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital and now works as a software engineer. I enjoyed binging his blog this week
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About Me
Hi! I’m Chris Lovejoy, a Junior Doctor and Data Scientist based in London.
I’m on a mission to improve healthcare through technology (particularly AI / machine learning), but along the way I want to share learnings that are relevant no matter your career choice or background.
In this weekly newsletter, I share my top thoughts and learnings from each week, as well as links to the best things on the internet that I come across.