Nigerian Medical Students and Researchers now have access to the country's first medical image repository, following the launch of the Data Science and Medical Image Analysis Training for Improved Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria (DATICAN) initiative and a High Performance Computing facility at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja.
The project is a collaboration between Lagos State University, the University of Chicago, the University of Ibadan and Redeemer's University, funded by the United States National Institutes of Health. It aims to address a well documented gap in Nigeria's healthcare system: the acute shortage of trained medical image analysts and data scientists capable of developing artificial intelligence tools suited to local disease patterns.
The DATICAN Medical Image Repository will provide Researchers, clinicians and students with access to annotated medical images covering cancer, stroke, brain tumours, epilepsy, chronic lung diseases, malaria and tuberculosis, enabling data driven research that previously lacked the local infrastructure to exist. A High Performance Computing facility accompanies the repository, providing the computational capacity needed to process large datasets, including MRI, CT and Xray images.
The programme will enrol 72 participants comprising MSc students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty, each of whom will design and implement an original data science project. Participants will receive school fees, stipends, research funds and conference grants for one to three years, alongside compulsory training hackathons held three times yearly and monthly webinar sessions led by University of Chicago faculty.
For Medical Students, the repository changes the texture of clinical training tangibly. Access to a wide range of real world imaging cases allows undergraduates and trainees to develop diagnostic skills that textbooks and limited clinical rotations cannot replicate. The National President of the Early Childhood Association of Nigeria, Professor Babajide Abidogun, said the initiative "bridges critical gaps in health literacy, practical learning, and medical research," adding that students can now observe anatomical and pathological variations in a way that fundamentally enhances critical thinking.
Education Minister Dr Tunji Alausa, represented at the launch, described DATICAN as "a model for global and local collaboration needed to accelerate innovation," and called on researchers, clinicians and policymakers to make full use of the new facilities.
For a generation of Nigerian health science students whose training has long been constrained by outdated equipment, limited clinical exposure and the absence of locally relevant research data, DATICAN represents a structural upgrade, not just a new facility.
