Clinicum offer programming support without hassle and prestige

Hi Daniel, how come you are a Clinicum programming advisor?

I am a civil engineer by training who has worked for a couple of years with health data for epidemiological studies, at the Department of Clinical Epidemiology (KEP) at KI. In my role, I have worked with algorithm development, analysis and data management for all sorts of different datasets, often in a supporting role for research projects where the subject matter knowledge came from doctors. I have worked extensively with programming with everything you could want to do with and around a dataset, and of course the most important question: understanding what you want and can do with your data.
When I was then asked if I wanted to help arrange a drop-in for programming support, it felt like a good continuation in that direction. But it is not just me who helps with Clinicum's programming drop-in – we are a whole bunch with different backgrounds!

What is Clinicum's programming drop-in and who is it for?

Clinicum's programming drop-in is a weekly open drop-in session where doctoral students and researchers affiliated with Karolinska Institutet or Region Stockholm can get help with programming-related questions that arise in their research projects. For example, questions about data processing and analysis or practical application of statistical methods.

Research projects can feel isolating, perhaps especially if you started in health but now need to learn how to program. It can be difficult to find someone to talk to, or get guidance at the right level. We who help with Clinicum's programming drop-in want to offer a safe and social place where you can get personal help without hassle and prestige.  It can be very rewarding to talk to a real person who can talk through the problem and give practical tips and advice!

See all upcoming dates on Clinicums webpage

What kind of questions can we ask you?

All kinds of programming questions are welcome! Those of us who help are usually statisticians and have extensive experience in statistical programming. We often get questions about data processing for a statistical analysis, precisely because it is such an important step before the analysis. This means that we can help with everything from questions about how to load your data, perform basic data processing and cleaning, to more complex questions about how data needs to be reformatted to fit specific analysis methods and fit the thinking in such an analysis.

We can also provide guidance on more general programming issues, such as how to think when faced with different challenges in data analysis, or how to attack a problem in a structured way.

As standard, we will have expertise in place to help in the language R, but we have people ready to help with experience in most languages used for statistical programming. If you happen to need help in another language, just email us a question some days in advance and we will do our best to answer it.