'I love how you’re constantly searching for the right balance between what an organisation needs and what society needs'
“I’ve always had a particular interest in healthcare and technology, so after graduating from high school, it made sense to choose the Bachelors’ in Technical Medicine at the University of Twente. This Bachelor’s is quite specifically defined and focuses on the implementation and analysis of healthcare innovations. I thought this was quite interesting, but I soon realised that I was drawn more to the analysis of the business processes within healthcare and how you can steer this. Simply put, I wanted to go into the direction of management a bit more. That’s why I figured that continuing with the Master’s in Technical Medicine might not be the right choice for me.
Pre-master’s
I orientated myself by talking with some friends and colleagues, and soon I decided that the Master’s in Industrial Engineering & Management, with the specialisation of Healthcare Technology Management would be the way to go. I only had to follow a pre-master’s of 15 EC before being admitted.
To this day, I don’t regret my choice. This Master’s gives me an opportunity to deepen, but also to broaden my knowledge and skills. For me, it was quite obvious to choose the specialisation in Healthcare Technology and Management. But the Master’s offers the chance to choose an additional specialisation in your elective space. I did that by choosing the specialisation in Production Logistic Management. This way, I got to learn more about logistics in healthcare but also in other fields. By adding this, I could orientate myself in a broader sense and I actually acquired knowledge and skills that not many professionals in my field possess.
Challenging real-life cases
During this Master’s, you get to work on a lot of real-life cases. The mandatory courses provide you with the theoretical foundation, but then there are a lot of courses in which you apply this theoretical knowledge to challenging real-life cases, often provided by an actual company. You also get to complete your Master’s assignment in the field, at an actual organisation. In my case, this is the Cancer Health Services Research Unit of the University of Melbourne. I’m basically developing a model to map out the care provided and analyse the costs of a certain type of immunotherapy that’s used for patients with melanoma.
What I like about my specialisation is that it’s not just about business and making a profit. You are continuously trying to find a balance between what an organisation needs and what society needs. I want to keep doing that after my Master’s. I hope that I will find a job in consultancy, as a business or data analyst. It would be great if I could do that within the healthcare sector, but I wouldn’t mind other fields as well, as I realised, thanks to my additional specialisation in Production and Logistics Management, that my interests also lie beyond healthcare.”