Student blogs

Hi everyone! I’m Ayu, a second-year Health Informatics student. This is my first post as a blogger here. Previously, I was in charge of the Instagram team for a year, so you can see some of my stories there too! And honestly, I’m so nervous to write here. I hope I can share some of my perspective as a student with you!

My previous journey

Before KI, I was a dentist in Indonesia. I worked in clinical practice for several years, and I developed a particular interest in some specialization cases, such as endodontics and restorative dentistry. During my work, I really enjoyed experiencing the pace of technology in dental settings. It’s ongoing knowledge, and there are a lot of new materials and tools that I have to learn for my patients. Let’s take restorative materials as an example: they are constantly advancing, and we can look at them from many angles, such as the biomaterials perspective, not just from the clinician’s side. One day, I had to learn how to use digital impressions for my patients. We used to have only manual impressions, and now things look very different. Digital impressions capture small details better and increase the fitting accuracy of the output.

I love learning, and dentistry gives me plenty of reasons to. Sometimes I also meet cases I’ve never seen before. When that happens, I dive into the latest articles and case reports.

Where technology comes in

This where my interest in technology started to bloom. I’ve loved math since I was little, and finding solutions is something I truly enjoy. During my years of work, I noticed many gaps that could be solved but remained problems for a long time. I wanted to help bridge them, and that’s how I found Health Informatics, a major that lets me connect both healthcare and data, specifically data science.

About the programme

Master of Health Informatics is offered jointly by Stockholm University (SU) and Karolinska Institutet (KI), so we get both the technical and the healthcare perspectives. My classmates come from both sides too, and there’s so much to explore from that mix.

Now in my second year, I’m currently juggling two parallel courses while stressing (happily!) over my thesis, because there are so many interesting topics to dig into. Please wish me luck in finding a thesis topic and a supervisor who clicks with my interests and my future. I want to contribute more to healthcare development through technology, without limiting my ceiling to dentistry alone.

I’ll share more on technology developments in healthcare later. For now, that’s all, and see you in the next post!