Student blogs

Time does flies. One day we were just starting our introductions in Autumn term 2018 and then “suddenly”, here we are in autumn 2020. It was approximately three months after our graduation. Maybe some of you are wondering about the career opportunities after you become an alumni of the Health Informatics Programme. So, here is it. And one more thing. Spoiler alert! If number matters for you, then you are going to like it. From this programme, you will get two degrees, each from Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University.

Winner Ng

I’ll start with myself. I am a medical doctor and hold a master’s degree in hospital administration, both from Indonesia. After some years of practising medicine and managing a hospital, I felt the urgency of learning how to incorporate health informatics into the clinical setting to improve quality of care and patient safety. Shortly speaking, two months prior to the graduation, I was recruited as a Health Informatics Specialist at Encare AB, a Stockholm-based company. One of my tasks is to translate multiple guidelines published by Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS®) Society into digital protocols, for hospitals and clinics to use for improving their perioperative care and of course, patient safety. In doing that, I need to perform literature reviews and also get in touch with the guidelines authors, surgeons, anesthetists, and healthcare providers, from across the globe to gather the needs and requirements. Then, I will work hand in hand with our team of developers to give birth to the digital versions of the guidelines. Health Informatics Programme equipped me well for this role. I had learned lots about how to conduct user needs and requirement analysis, collaborate with the computer scientist, applying health informatics standards, and also project management. I’m glad that I took the programme as it led me to where I am now.

Minhao Zhou

Hi, my name is Minhao Zhou and I graduated from the Master’s program of health informatics this year. I am now working at the Center for epidemiology and community medicine in Stockholm County Council. I am involved with several projects, such as the development of a public health mobile app, updating a public health website, and some other research projects.

The knowledge that I got from my master’s program does help me a lot when working. For example, from the course ‘User Needs, Requirements Engineering and Evaluation’, we all got a better understanding of how to collect and analyze users’ needs and how to build products based on that. For two of my projects that I am working with, we are creating tools to display or collect health-related information to the general population in Stockholm. Therefore, it is essential to understand their needs before we initiate our development.

Secondly, the data science course from Stockholm University also benefits me a lot especially when it comes to research projects. The conventional statistical methods used in epidemiology study are mostly parametric or semi-parametric. However, when introducing state-of-art machine learning algorithms into some research projects, we could use the dataset to create, for example, a sophisticated and accurate risk prediction model or classification system and add value to the original study.

Thanaphop Na Nakhonphanom

My name is Thanaphop Na Nakhonphanom. Currently, I am a general practitioner and a health informatician at Srinagarind Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. I earned an MD (’16) from Khon Kaen University, an MMedSc in Health Informatics (’20) from Karolinska Institutet, and an MSc in Health Informatics (’20) from Stockholm University. My current work focuses on the use of the HL7 FHIR standard for clinical information modelling (e.g., occupational data for health and stroke care). During my study in the master’s programme in health informatics, the standardisation within health informatics course had a great influence on my health informatics career development. The course has provided me with knowledge and skills to apply health informatics standards to store, retrieve, and exchange data among different health information systems. In addition, I have advanced knowledge and skills in the HL7 FHIR by completing an extra course—HL7 FHIR Fundamentals Course—from the HL7 International and attending the HL7 FHIR DevDays 2019 in Amsterdam. In the DevDays event, my team and I won a student track prize. We developed a prototype of web-application for peritoneal dialysis patients based on the HL7 FHIR standard.

Suheng Shi

My name is Suheng Shi, I worked as a nurse in Finland prior to starting the health informatics program. After graduation, I am now currently working as a Junior Project Manager-Remote healthcare. My responsibilities include technical support, after-sale support, customer success, and quality management control. I am also involved in the project of digital technology for post-operative remote care and rehabilitation of thoracic and cardiac surgery patients.

The Master’s program helped me to better comprehend users’ needs, understanding the difficulties of actualizing customers’ requirements, methods of evaluating the system, and the way of communicating with different parties.

Elena Minenko

Hi, I’m Elena. Currently, I work as a project manager in a startup company Minnity AB. The company develops a digital service to facilitate an individualized approach to home care. Presently I work on a project that is developing a microlearning platform for care staff. My work as a project manager includes two main areas of responsibility. The first one is managing the project including setting priorities, planning the project, communicating with the project team, and writing project documentation. The second area of responsibility is testing the product with users. Besides this, I am also involved in the strategic development of the product. 

The Master’s Program in Health Informatics gave me useful knowledge in the areas of computer science, project management, user experience design, user needs, requirements engineering, standardization, and mobile applications in healthcare that I apply in my work. Some knowledge, for example in the area of project management, I can use directly in my current job. Other parts of the Master’s course help me more indirectly for example in understanding the processes of software development. 

It is important to mention that many group tasks and assignments that we had during 2 years of studying helped me a lot to adapt to the Swedish working culture. Working within a multidisciplinary team with people of various backgrounds enabled me to see the benefits of this approach and enriched my experience. Besides this, practical skills in project management and teamwork using agile methods equipped me for real-life work. That was also great to try myself in various roles from UX specialist to project manager while studying. This helped me to gain valuable experience thereby making it easier to choose the best path for my future carrier after graduation

Last but not least, studying Health Informatics at KI gave me the opportunity to learn from experts and opened opportunities to communicate with the specialists in HI and build a network of colleagues and friends.

Jintai Liu

Hi my name is Jintai Liu, a medical doctor from China. After graduating from the health informatics program, I work as a product manager at Tencent Healthcare in China. And I am designing and developing a CDSS for  hospitals in rural area, village and common towns. Basically, the skills we have learnt in the program can be used in my work, including the medical standardazation i.e. ICD code, and machine learing model. What we have experienced during these two year have helped me to think and construct a better system in a holistic way.

There you have it. Although it does not cover every one of us in the class, but I do hope that by sharing our experiences, we will give you a bit of spirit boost in finishing your master’s degree.

This is also my last blog as a digital ambassador of Karolinska Institutet. I am delighted for the opportunity of writing my thoughts and receiving feedback from you all in the last two years. I guess this is goodbye and see you around in the health informatics field. 

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