Master track: Personalised Monitoring and Coaching.
How it started
I started the pre-master two years after completion of my HBO bachelor at Zuyd hogeschool, where I studied Biometrie. With Biometrie I focused on technological and physiological aspects of non-invasive measurements in patients (e.g. motion tracking, imaging, ECG, EEG), this makes my background more technical than most of the other Health sciences students. While working as an engineer at a MedTech company I started to look for a master course which would suit me. I found the website of Health Sciences and what interested me the most was the strong connection with technology, which is only found at the University of Twente. Especially the field of technology assessment encouraged me to start the pre-master.
About the pre-master
The premaster provides you with the basic knowledge to start the master programme. Which includes courses teaching research skills, health economics, an introduction into accounting and health technology assessment. Besides the interesting courses, the relatively small classes, and good study facilities provided by the University of Twente attributed to a good study experience.
About the master Health Sciences
The master programme started with a semester of general courses, including Data Science, Health economic modelling and stakeholder preference elicitation and decision support. The general courses are followed by a quartile in which you participate in a master specialization track. My choice for the Human centred eHealth and healthcare services design track was mostly driven by my interest in medical technology and its development. Not only does this course take you through all stages of designing a new eHealth intervention, it encourages you to engage in data acquisition and data analysis, which are often critical components when designing an eHealth intervention. Development of an eHealth intervention is an iterative process in which each development step should be evaluated in order to improve the design. Therefor, the course also pays attention to the evaluation of eHealth developments both during the design phase and after introduction into practice.
Although I enjoyed the eHealth specialization track, the course about cost-effectiveness analysis in healthcare was what interested me the most. Driven by this interest I searched for a thesis assignment which involved a cost-effectiveness analysis. My assignment was initiated by the Leiden University Medical Centre and involved the comparison of two screening strategies, outcomes of the study potentially change the screening strategy used in this specific group of patients. With increasing health care costs, cost-effectiveness analysis have become increasingly important in health care decision making.
Career perspectives
Health Sciences provided me with the knowledge to improve health care by implementation of technology and innovations, which offers multiple career perspectives from research to consultancy. The need for Health Sciences students is also illustrated by a number of students who already found a job prior to graduation. After my graduation, I would like to either get more involved in research, or find a job in which I am involved in the development of new technologies by providing a development team with information about the needs of patients and potential end-users.