Why sponsor a Medical student to study an MSc in Data Science?
1. Healthcare needs to change
You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Observe any healthcare system across the world and you will recognise that the current models for delivering healthcare are not fit for purpose in the 21st century. A systemic adaptation of the healthcare system for the today’s world is desperately needed.
Healthcare costs are rising, yet ‘evidence of the direction of association between healthcare cost and quality is inconsistent’ (Source: Hussey et al 2013). Simply spending more money is not the answer. Our current population is ageing at an unprecedented rate (Source: National Institute on Aging (NIA) 2016). But where we have succeeded in living longer lives we all do not necessarily own an improved quality of living. According to the 2015, Lancet Global disease burden report, our poor lifestyle choices led to the majority of the top 5 causes of global disease burden in the world (Source: Donnelly 2015). Yep, that’s right — the majority of the top 5! Globally there are over 400 million people without access to healthcare (Source: WHO 2015), and wherever you look inequalities in health outcomes still exist between and within countries irrespective of a nations’ level of wealth (Source: WHO 2017)…
…Now imagine what will happen if our global population reaches it’s projected 9.8 billion (from its current 7 billion status) by 2050; and we had failed to make any significant change with regards to how healthcare is delivered (statistically speaking the year 2050 is within the lifetime of the majority of people reading this)?! (Source: UN 2017)
Worrying right?
‘Behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks can explain half of global mortality’ — Lancet 2015 Global disease burden study
As much as we have eradicated smallpox, dramatically enhanced cancer survival rates and significantly improved global infant and maternal mortality rates. We have a global healthcare system that is buckling under its own potential. From my perspective here in the UK, you only have to watch one episode of BBC series — Hospital, to realise even with access to the amazing universal health coverage provided by the NHS our system-wide issues continue to be a barrier we can no longer ignore. And this is all without me mentioning the concerns that exist with the bedrock of medical care that is — evidence-based medicine within the 21st century (Source: Greenhalgh 2014).
There will not and cannot be a silver bullet for the future and current issues affecting healthcare. The solution will not be simple, neither does it have to be complex. But I am certain the solution will need to be data-driven. With better utilisation of data, we will dramatically increase our chances of making sure whatever change is made is done so with the view to reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and importantly improve patient outcomes.
‘Data science is not optional in health care reform; it is the linchpin of the whole process.’ — O’relily et al 2012
Data generated by the system, collected by clinicians and created by the patient is our most objective and honest lens through which we can drastically advance the healthcare system. We have to better utilise insights this data holds in order to appropriately guide our healthcare system sustainably into the 22nd century. The question now is who will help lead this change?
2. We need doctors who own the ability to drive technological change in healthcare
For decades medical schools across the UK (and largely the world) have refined the art of training medical students to become doctors who are amazingly capable of caring for their patients, one individual at a time. The problem is that this training has largely failed to adapt to the changing role of a doctor as the demands placed on the healthcare system, by our changing human lives, continues to evolve.
Currently, under our present healthcare system, amazing doctors produced by our amazing medical schools, are being limited by the system’s inability to support the practice they have been trained to conduct.
Therefore, in my opinion, no longer can doctors train to become solely involved in the care of his/her patient. At the very least for the sack of all our patients, we also need to be trained and equipped to adapt the system within which we operate. I strongly believe we are in the current state of our healthcare system today partly because there has been a systemic lack of multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals, with skills complementary to their medical background, leading the healthcare system.
For me, to achieve our role as clinicians, as enablers of health and wellbeing, and to do so at scale, then doctors present and future require an additional set of skills to that taught by the Medical school. Skills that are owned by those changing the rest of the world as we know it around us. By this, I mean skills of those who work at disruptive technology start-ups in the bubbles that are often referred to as Silicon Valley or London’s Silicon Roundabout and taught across the university departments of computer science, health informatics, human-computer interaction, product design, service design and others.
Imagine if we had a breed of clinicians who left medical school with a strong grasp of both clinical, technical or even design abilities. The ability to practice as a caring and competent doctor, but also to work as part of a technology and or design team to build the system-wide applications, services and products that will enable the change we all hope to see — more intuitive decision support tools, robust patient management systems and a more personal approach to self-care. Wouldn’t that be simply amazing?!
Training to become a part of this new breed of clinicians is my ambition. My hope is to complete my secured MSc place to study Data Science for Research in Health and Biomedicine at the UCL Institute of Health Informatics and return to clinical training at UCL with the hope of utilising my new found data science skills to help identify problems, design potential solutions, build prototypes for those solutions, and use data to justify its value in further improving the operation of the healthcare system and ultimately valuable outcomes for patients. To many, this may sound a bit crazy! Ok, maybe even wildly crazy! But I hope you would agree with me that we can’t leave all potential digital solutions of healthcare to only the techies. I as a future doctor would like to place myself and my colleagues in the best position so that we work together with our techie friends, our design friends, the government and everyone else who might be involved in this necessary healthcare revolution, in order to help turn this healthcare ship around.
3. So that I can inspire others to take a similar leap of faith
You would be hard pressed to find another medical student with an offer to complete an MSc in Data Science anywhere in the world. And that’s fine. But as more and more medical students recognise we need to adapt our model of delivering healthcare; and technology needs to be a part of this change, I envisage that I will not be the last medical student to embark upon this journey of augmenting my medical school training with a strong grasp of technical data skills (or any other complementary skills for that matter).
If I am to receive enough sponsorship from an industry partner to accept my MSc place at UCL, I hope to help support my peers to up-skill their influence as medics. The issues of the healthcare system can not be solved by me alone or any other one individual. This requires a team effort. A multi-disciplinary team effort. But what I can do as an individual is to help pave a way so that others might follow or at the very least more easily carve their own path, without battling the same resistance that I have had to face.
To end, I write this sponsorship after being rejected from a UCL MSc scholarship application and failing to find any suitable public funding to sponsor my place at UCL. Unfortunately, my personal financial circumstances mean that I cannot fund my place on this MSc under my own means.
So to answer the question ….
Why sponsor a medical student to study an MSc in Data Science, the reason is if you or your company believes, as do I, that we need a data-driven approach to healthcare and qualified doctors along with current medical students should be a part of delivering this change.
Thank you for your time.
— — Additional info:
- Please share this with anyone you think might be able to help. I have until 31st August 2017 to find the funding of £20,000 I need to complete my MSc. This is to cover both my tuition fees and maintenance costs living in London. In return for an industry led sponsorship, I intend to complete an industry focused piece of research as part of MSc dissertation whilst also offering to spend time during the summer at the sponsoring company, in application of the skills learnt as part of the MSc.
- About Me: I am a straight A and A* student, I run two early stage startups (one in the education and the other in the digital health space) and recently graduated from my 3rd year at UCL Medical school with a BSc in Medical Sciences with Global Health, averaging 68%. I am the first in my family to go to university and in the 2015 was named one of the Top 10 black students in the UK after my first year at UCL. Finally, last month I was accepted as part of the second cohort of NHS Clinical entrepreneurs. The NHS Clinical entrepreneur training programme represents the largest and first training programme in the world for doctors and medical students to help lead innovative ideas within the healthcare system. You will be hard pressed to find an individual more determined to succeed as a part of leading the change we need to see in healthcare, than me!
- Please find a link to my LinkedIn here for more information: www.linkedin.com/in/ivanbeckley/
- And my email address if you would like to get in contact to discuss further: ivanbeckley@btinternet.com. Thank you for your time reading this. This is undoubtedly going to a challenging yet exciting journey.
