Health Data Science emerges from the intersection of healthcare and data science and with the help of mathematics, statistics, epidemiology and informatics. The current global pandemic has given rise to a strong need for healthcare data scientists who are not only working for the healthcare data but are working on the vaccine also. (https://analyticsindiamag.com/what-does-it-take-to-become-a-healthcare-data-scientist/)

In USA, in general, the duration of this course is one and half years. Harvard T.H. Chan, School of Public Health has a Master of Science in Health Data Science, which gives training in “Statistics, computing and health sciences” and helps students to understand how to “wrangle and transform data to perform meaningful analyses, Visualize and interpret data and effectively communicate results and findings, Apply statistical methods to draw scientific conclusions from data, Utilize statistical models and machine learning, Apply methods for big data to reveal patterns, trends and associations, Employ high – performance scientific computing and software engineering.” (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/health-data-science/). Carnegie Mellon University has a Master of Science in Health Care Analytics and Information Technology, which focuses on “how to convert raw data into actionable solutions for complex problems facing the health care system and medical firms.” (https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/programs/health-care-analytics-master/) University of South California’s Master of Science in Healthcare Data Science is a “cross – disciplinary joint degree program offered by the Keck School of Medicine and the Viterbi School of Engineering” which helps students to “understand the requirements and techniques to manage health and healthcare process data collected by healthcare providers and organizations (https://viterbigradadmission.usc.edu/programs/masters/msprograms/data-science/ms-in-healthcare-data-science/) The University of Texas offers a Master’s in Health Data Science, which “focuses on management and analysis of health data” and “analyses, interprets and presents health data care data to increase quality, reduces costs and improve operations”. (https://sbmi.uth.edu/applynow/health-data-science-track.htm) University of Michigan has a Health Data Science Concentration, which develops “substantial knowledge of biomedical sciences and public health, big data analytics and computing skills and statistical modeling and analysis.” (https://sph.umich.edu/biostat/programs/health-data-science.html) Duke Trinity College of Arts and Sciences has an MS in Health Data Science, which develops “skills and experience in the basic statistical methodologies as well as computer programming”. (https://stat.duke.edu/ms/ms-focus-areas-tracks/health-datascience)

In the UK, the duration of this course is one year but it is more interesting to see that while delivering the learnings, some universities focuses on the computational solutions to the health care industry, with some maintaining a genomic and epidemiological approach. University College London offers an MSc in Health Data Science, which covers “computational and statistical methods as applied to problems in data-intensive medical research”. (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate/taught-degrees/health-data-science-msc) London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine offers an MSc in Health Data Science, which teaches to apply “statistical and machine learning approaches to analyse health – related data” and to “acquire the tools and skills to manage very large diverse datasets across healthcare systems”. (https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/courses/masters-degrees/health-data-science) Imperial College London has an MSc in Health Data Analytics and Machine Learning, which equips students to “explore emerging ‘Big’ health data, but will also provide extensive experience in their application in a real-life setting in Environmental, Molecular, Cancer, and Computational epidemiology as well as in Population and Health sciences.” (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/medicine/health-data-analytics/)  University of Aberdeen runs an MSc in Health Data Science, which enables students in “both healthcare and computational backgrounds to develop their health data science skills, supported by an interdisciplinary team of academics, NHS and industrial partners” and aims to “create innovative, interdisciplinary, data science solutions to the big challenges for health and health care, to improve health for individuals, local communities and globally”.(https://www.abdn.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-taught/degree-programmes/1230/health-data-science/) Manchester University has an MSc in Health Data Science, which aims “to create a new breed of scientist who can understand the healthcare sector and medicine, how data is collected and analysed, and how this can be communicated to influence various stakeholders.” (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/10076/msc-health-data-science/course-details/#course-profile)  University of Birmingham runs an MSc in Health Data Science, which gives knowledge of areas such as “clinical bioinformatics, health informatics, epidemiology, clinical systems, patient-focused systems, bioinformatics and omics analytics”. (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/taught/med/health-data-science.aspx) Swansea University runs an MSc in Health Data Science in which students can learn how to process the data “concerning the health of human beings are developed” and also how to “extract valuable information about a population (epidemiological applications) has the potential to improve quality of life on a large scale.”  (https://www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/medicine/health-data-science/) University of Exeter has an MSc in Health Data Science, which focuses on “health services research and modelling, and stratified medicine, including genomics”.  (https://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/medicine/healthdatasciencemsc/)

University of Bordeaux has Master of Science in Public Health Data Science, which focuses on “epidemiology, informatics and statistics”.  (https://www.u-bordeaux.com/Education/Study-offer/Masters-in-English/Public-Health-Data-Science) UIC Barcelona offers Master’s degree in Health Data Science, which helps to “gain the ability to analyse healthcare data for research and management purposes using the most advanced techniques (data mining, business analytics, machine learning, deep learning, etc.).” Students will also get an opportunity to use “different types of statistical software” such as “R, SQL, Phyton, Power BI, Hadoop, NoSQL, etc. to provide solutions and help in intelligent decision-making based on the data and improve health among the population.” (https://www.uic.es/en/studies-uic/health/masters-degree-health-data-science/presentation).

The University of New South Wales Sydney, Centre for Big Data Research in Health offers a Master of Science in Health Data Science, which covers “comprehension of complex health issues, through data wrangling and management, machine learning and data mining, data analytics, data modelling and communication including data visualisation.” (https://cbdrh.med.unsw.edu.au/postgraduate-coursework)

Massey University, New Zealand, offers a Master of Analytics (Health), which equips students the skill “to turn data into information that can be used to make policy and business decisions within health-related industries”.  (https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/learning/programme-course/programme.cfm?prog_id=93537&major_code=PHLTH#)

Another University in New Zealand, Eastern Institute of Technology’s MSc in Health and Medical Data Analytics   (HMDA) focuses on data applications by which students can apply their academic knowledge for a concrete business product. (https://degree-programmes.eithealth.eu/msc-health-and-medical-data-analytics-hmda/)