Practical Teaching Units Focusing on the Integration of Medical Research Data: Updating the MI-Lab.

Abstract

In student teaching for medical informatics there is a need to expand practical exercises to address current challenges and advancements related to Open Science, FAIR data, data integration and analysis. Developing new exercises addressing such needs remains a significant challenge for educators, as it requires integrating relevant software and providing appropriate datasets. The same applies to creating suitable instructional materials that can be used in an executable environment, while ensuring alignment with industry-standard tools and workflows. The MI-Lab is a laboratory environment for teaching medical informatics. We extend the MI-Lab with the relevant research software from initiatives such as NFDI4Health. Our work offers six additional teaching units aligned with defined learning objectives in medical informatics, ensuring integration with current curricula. This significantly reduces preparation time for educators while enabling the integration of industry-relevant tools. An initial evaluation with eight students indicated improved clarity, structure, and perceived learning support. Overall, the results demonstrate the dual benefit of this approach: efficiency and coherence for educators, and improved structure and motivation for students. Our approach includes containerized exercises with pre-configured software, curated datasets and structured teaching materials. The resulting learning units are incorporated into our curriculum for medical informatics and practically applied in teaching.