Successful mingle between clinicians and data scientists during matchmaking event

A key requirement to apply for the yearly call for collaboration in Health, Medicine and Technology (HMT)  is that one of the partners should be from KTH and one from Region Stockholm. Therefore the KTH Life Science Platform  and KTH Digitalization Platform  arranged a matchmaking event  to encourage collaboration between experts in data science and medical/clinical research. Of 28 participating researchers, 15 came from KTH and 13 from Region Stockholm.

“Apart from bringing together scientists from KTH and Region Stockholm to facilitate their search for suitable research partners for the HMT call, we also wanted to help these two groups to understand each other and stimulate an important discussion about the opportunities and limitations with access to experimental/clinical data, and with the data analysis of these,” says Peter Savolainen , KTH Life Science Platform Director.

Informative introduction to the HMT call

The event started with information about the HMT call by Professor Joakim Jaldén  from the KTH-Region Stockholm partnership and a presentation by Associate Professor Kevin Smith  about his collaboration experience between data scientists and clinicians.

“The initial presentations about the formalities of the upcoming HMT call and experience report on successful research collaborations were informative and are expected to be helpful for the participants to compose good project applications,” says Tobias Oechtering , KTH Digitalization Platform Director.

Several obvious matches

Following the introduction, there were pitch presentations followed by mingling.

“We brought together several researchers from KTH, Karolinska Institutet, and Region Stockholm that had not met before. Almost all participants prepared a short but informative pitch presentation. Thus, in a very short time, we have introduced several researchers to each other that have overlapping interests. In the following mingle, almost everyone took the opportunity to network and extend the discussions on concrete topics,” says Tobias Oechtering.

“There were several obvious matches between clinicians and data scientists, concerning, for example, software and hardware development for sensors and analysis of brain injuries,” says Peter Savolainen.

Both directors summarise the matchmaking event as successful and are now curious to see whether any constellations from this event will be among the applicants to the HMT call. They now have plans to arrange similar events in the future.

Text: Helena Mayer