ICI3D: first MMED clinic delivered in Cape Town

ICI3D’s 2026 Meaningful Modelling of Epidemiological Data (MMED) clinic was held from 15 to 26 June at AIMS South Africa in Muizenberg, Cape Town — the first clinic delivered under the project’s Global Health EDCTP3 grant.

The two-week training brought together 45 participants from 18 countries and focused on helping quantitative researchers make sound inferences from imperfect epidemiological data. Organised by South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) at Stellenbosch University with the ICI3D programme, the clinic featured faculty from across the consortium, including SACEMA, the University of Cape Town, the University of Nairobi, AIMS South Africa, the University of North Carolina and McMaster University.

The curriculum combined lectures, tutorials, coding sessions, research and model-building exercises, poster sessions, health-economics teaching and an AI-assisted modelling pipeline workshop. Eight team projects tackled applied public-health questions, including measles, mpox, TB vaccine cost-effectiveness and pneumococcal vaccine dosing.

Faculty and participants described the clinic as a collaborative, people-centred training experience that strengthened technical skills and built lasting networks. The next ICI3D clinic, DAIDD, will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 29 November to 5 December 2026.