Episode title: Building Scotland’s Health Data Infrastructure: A Conversation with Carole Morris (https://www.hdruk.ac.uk/people/carole-morris/)
In this episode of Health Data Science Insights – Cambridge, Alexia Sampri and Elena Raffetti speak with Carole Morris, Head of Data and Modelling Services at Public Health Scotland.
Carole reflects on her 25-year journey, from her early days as an information analyst working with Excel, SAS, and SPSS in NHS Lothian, to leading national teams overseeing Scotland’s Trusted Research Environment (the National Safe Haven) and linked health datasets.
The conversation explores:
How Scotland’s Community Health Index (CHI) enables data linkage
The evolution from manual spreadsheets to R, Python, SQL, and modern data science tools
Challenges in handling missing data, infrastructure, and data governance
Critical skills for the next generation of health data scientists, from coding to ethics and communication
The role of AI and automation in data curation, cleaning, and future healthcare innovation
Balancing leadership, team wellbeing, and work–life with passions like playing hockey
A fascinating look into how Scotland built one of the world’s strongest health data infrastructures, and what’s next for the future of public health.
