Thomas Pronk
Amsterdam UMC
Fellowship project title: Implementing software management plans in medical science to improve science and safety
The goal: Develop an efficient workflow to deliver effective Software Management Plans (SMPs) for medical research software.
The why: Research software is not always sustainable or FAIR, which are two issues that SMPs try to address. The eScience Center has already introduced a very agile SMP template that I will use as a starting point for software management at Amsterdam UMC. I want to create a workflow for efficiently producing SMPs, offering relevant training, consultancy, and evaluation resources. In the process I hope to learn from practice; what challenges and opportunities do we encounter if we introduce such a workflow on the scale of an organization like Amsterdam UMC? Are there idiosyncrasies to medical science that require adaptation to the default SMP template? Additionally, I want to learn how we could best adapt SMPs such that they streamline the evolution of medical research software into medical devices that comply with the Medical Device Regulation (MDR).
As a Research Software Consultant at Amsterdam UMC, I will already pursue the above. I would like to do so in close collaboration with local and nationwide research software and medical science communities, sharing knowledge and resources. As an eScience Fellow, I hope to foster such collaborations.
