UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS)

What UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS) does

The UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS) is a research center within the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences (SUND) at the University of Copenhagen, established on March 1, 2020 under Professor Anders Krogh. HeaDS serves as the institutional hub for health data science at SUND, providing data science support services, training, and research coordination across 20 affiliated member groups spanning 9 SUND departments and centers. Its core offerings include SUND DataLab (free consultations, commissioned research, and courses on omics analysis, HPC, GDPR compliance, and ML), the national Health Data Science Sandbox (containerized training modules and research infrastructure hosted on Danish supercomputers Computerome and UCloud across a five-university network), an extensive 12+ course catalog (R, Python, Bash, RNA-seq, Genomics, HPC, ML, GDPR), and community events including the Talking HeaDS seminar series and biennial Health Data Science Day conference. The center hosts two internal research groups — the Krogh Group (representation learning and generative modeling for clinical and gene expression data) and the Karaderi Group (genetic epidemiology of autoimmune hypothyroidism).

HeaDS operates on a grant-funded, non-commercial model. All consulting, courses, and PhD supervision commissions are provided free to qualifying SUND researchers, PhD students, and Region H hospital employees. Funding flows from institutional UCPH support and multiple Novo Nordisk Foundation grants covering the National Health Data Science Sandbox (2020), the Center for Basic Machine Learning Research in Life Science (2020), the SE3D synthetic health data project (2023), and the Research Leader Programme (2020), with SUND PhD School underwriting free PhD commission hours. Headcount stands at approximately 16 employees (13 direct plus 3 at the Department of Computer Science). The center serves as a coordination and capability-building node for health data science within Danish academic biomedicine rather than a commercial enterprise.

Name

UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS)

Legal name

Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS) at University of Copenhagen

Website

https://heads.ku.dk

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS) is a non-commercial academic hub at the University of Copenhagen's SUND faculty that provides free data science consulting, a national training Sandbox on Danish supercomputers, a 12+ course catalog, and internal AI/omics research for SUND researchers, PhD students, and hospital employees.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Health Data Science Research and Training Services

NAICS

Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (54171), Other Scientific and Technical Consulting Services (54169)

SIC

Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731), Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)

akta.pro primary industry

Healthcare Data Lakes, Lakehouses & Cloud Warehouses (HLACAIAA)

akta.pro secondary industry

Clinical Trial Informatics (EDC/CTMS/eCOA/eTMF) (HLAGAJAM)

Keywords

• Health data science
• Bioinformatics consulting
• Omics data analysis
• High performance computing
• Computational biology research

Headquarters

HQ city

Copenhagen

HQ country

Denmark

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Infrastructure, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Grant Funding: HeaDS is funded through institutional support from the University of Copenhagen and external grants from organizations such as the Novo Nordisk Foundation. As an academic center within SUND Faculty Service, it operates on non-revenue generating basis focused on supporting research and education.
2. Free Services for PhD Students: SUND PhD school provides funding for free supervision commissions (20-40 hours) to PhD students who need help with health data science analysis, provided their principal supervisor is not within the field of data science.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

HeaDS is a university research center that provides data science support to biomedical researchers through the SUND DataLab (consultations, commissioned end-to-end analysis, and workshops) and the national Health Data Science Sandbox (containerized training modules hosted on Danish supercomputers Computerome and UCloud). It also offers a curriculum of 12+ courses in programming, bioinformatics, HPC, ML, and GDPR, plus a seminar series and biennial conference, and hosts internal research groups (Krogh Group on representation learning; Karaderi Group on genetic epidemiology of autoimmune disease).

Product overview

UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS) is a research center at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences (SUND) offering a portfolio of educational services, consulting support, and research infrastructure. The core offerings center on the SUND DataLab providing data science consultations and commissioned research services, the Health Data Science Sandbox providing training modules on Danish supercomputers, and an extensive course program covering programming languages (R, Python, Bash), bioinformatics workflows (RNA-seq, Genomics), and specialized topics (Machine Learning, HPC, GDPR). HeaDS also organizes the Talking HeaDS seminar series and Health Data Science Day conference, and hosts internal research groups (Krogh Group, Karaderi Group) investigating representation learning and genetic epidemiology respectively.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• SUND DataLab
• Health Data Science Sandbox
• From Excel to R
• Python I (Python Tsunami Part 1)
• Python II (Python Tsunami Part II)
• R for Data Science
• Mastering the Terminal with Bash and Unix
• Git & GitHub
• HPC-Launch
• HPC-Pipes
• Introduction to Bulk RNA-seq Analysis
• Genomics (GWAS)
• GDPR Workshop
• Introduction to Machine Learning in Biomedical Research
• Talking HeaDS Seminar Series
• Health Data Science Day Conference
• PhD Commission Hours
• Drop-in Consultations
• Krogh Group
• Karaderi Group

Quantifiable outcome

• Free supervision commissions (20-40 hours) available to qualifying PhD students at SUND
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability6 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

18 partnerships are on record, tiered core, major and minor.

• Computerome (Danish National HPC)coreTechnology or IntegrationDanish national supercomputer hosting the Health Data Science Sandbox environment. Provides HPC infrastructure for training and research in health data science.
• UCloud (Danish HPC)coreTechnology or IntegrationDanish HPC platform hosting the Health Data Science Sandbox environment for training and research in health data science.
• GitHub (hds-sandbox organization)coreTechnology or IntegrationGitHub organization (hds-sandbox) hosting open-source module materials for the Health Data Science Sandbox.
• DDSA (Danish Data Science Community)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDanish Data Science Community supports the Talking HeaDS seminar series as a sponsor. Supports strengthening health data science community and networking.
• Aalborg University (AAU)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSandbox network partner with Sander Boisen Valentin serving as Data Scientist (AAU) for the Health Data Science Sandbox national project.
• Aarhus University (AU)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSandbox network partner with Samuele Soraggi serving as Data Scientist (AU) for the Health Data Science Sandbox national project.
• Technical University of Denmark (DTU)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSandbox network partner with Jesper Roy Christensen serving as Data Scientist (DTU/Computerome) for the Health Data Science Sandbox national project.
• University of Southern Denmark (SDU)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSandbox network partner with Jacob Fredegaard Hansen serving as Data Scientist (SDU) for the Health Data Science Sandbox national project.
• Biotech Research & Innovation Centre (BRIC)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers Albin Gustav Sandelin and Joachim Lütken Weischenfeldt participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Center for GlycomicsminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researcher Hiren Jitendra Joshi participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Center for Translational NeuromedicineminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researcher Hajime Hirase participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers Mani Arumugam, Tune Pers, and Malte Thodberg (Hansen Group) participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Center for Protein Research (CPR)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers Annelaura Bach Nielsen (Mann Group) and Simon Rasmussen participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology (ILF)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers David Gloriam and Alexander Sebastian Hauser participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Department of Public HealthminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers Søren Brunak, Jan Gorodkin, Ernst Stefan Seeman, and Claus Thorn Ekstrøm participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Globe InstituteminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researchers Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen, and Fernando Racimo participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Center for Pharmaceutical Health Data Science (CPDSE)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMember group with researcher Morten Lindow participating in HeaDS Hub.
• Aalborg University (SE3D Collaboration)majorStrategic or Co-development PartnerSE3D project collaboration with Martin Bøgsted and Jan Trzaskowski at Aalborg University for synthetic health data research.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights7 records

Broad incumbents

• Broad Institute: Broad operates large-scale computational biology, genomics, and health data science programs across Harvard/MIT, offering research services, training, and shared infrastructure. HeaDS is a smaller national-level analog with overlapping mission.
• The Alan Turing Institute: The Turing Institute is the UK's national institute for data science and AI, with health data science as a major program area. Like HeaDS, it serves as a national hub for training, infrastructure, and applied research collaborations across multiple universities.
• Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (CPR): CPR is a sister NNF-funded center at UCPH focused on proteomics, disease biology, and translational research. It overlaps with HeaDS on data-intensive life science research and shares the same Novo Nordisk Foundation funding ecosystem and UCPH parent organization.
• Harvard Department of Biomedical Informatics: Harvard DBMI is a mature biomedical informatics department offering research, training, and service infrastructure for Harvard Medical School researchers. It is a benchmark for what a scaled academic health data science hub can become.

Direct peers

• European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI): EMBL-EBI operates large-scale life science data infrastructure (databases, compute, training) across Europe. Like HeaDS, it provides bioinformatics services, training, and HPC-based research infrastructure funded largely through public and grant sources.
• Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR): Stanford BMIR provides biomedical informatics research, training, and consulting services to clinical and basic science departments. Like HeaDS, it operates inside a university health sciences faculty and bridges data science with biomedical research.
• Wellcome Sanger Institute: Sanger runs bioinformatics, genomics, and computational biology programs supporting UK biomedical researchers. It provides training, HPC infrastructure, and data services analogous to HeaDS's Sandbox and DataLab offerings.

Regional players

• SciLifeLab: SciLifeLab is a Swedish national life science laboratory providing bioinformatics support, training, and infrastructure across Swedish universities. It is a Nordic parallel to HeaDS, serving a different national ecosystem with similar mission and structure.
• Berlin Institute of Health (BIH): BIH provides translational medicine and data science services across Charité and the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin. Its digital health and clinical data platforms parallel HeaDS's data science consulting and infrastructure work for a major university hospital.
• Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG): CRG is a Barcelona-based institute conducting computational biology, genomics, and bioinformatics research with training programs. It is comparable in scale and mission to HeaDS, serving biomedical researchers with data science infrastructure and training.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/hds-sandbox
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/ucph-heads

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about UCPH Center for Health Data Science (HeaDS)