Why Travel & Study Healthcare?

Personally, I yearned to travel and take advantage of my youth. Professionally, if I wanted to be worth my salt as a medical innovator I needed to further study healthcare and the problems associated with it. Now if only I could combine the two….

Taking the M.S. of Medical Device Innovation program at the University of Minnesota changed me. The knowledge I gained about the medical industry and the process of going from a healthcare problem to a commercialized device was invaluable. It made me aware of the trends in the medical industry and gave me insight into where things were going and where things should go. Most importantly, it brought my attention to the problems associated with healthcare and how much opportunity there is for all of us to improve it!

The program reawakened my desires that I had back in undergrad. These were things that after working for some years, I didn’t realize I was ignoring. I am sure I am butchering this quote but this is the gist of what one of my professors said in undergrad at the U of M:

“Don’t just go to a company and work on the products that already exist. Be a part of coming up with the next generation of medical devices that will further help patients.” -Bin He

Throughout taking the program, that quote kept popping up in my mind. How could I use my unique strengths, skills, and knowledge to contribute to the next generation of medical devices? After completing the program in the late summer of 2017 this only intensified the question and my quest for an answer.

I started applying what I learned to products I worked on and even new possibilities for Medtronic. This was the fun stuff. What I soon realized though, was that my solutions were based on industry trends and could be developed without my influence by someone knowledgeable of the industry and therapy. Although the people who usually do this have many more years of experience and I was happy I had the ability to do this also, I discovered that I wanted to find my unique place in the medical world. What I mean is that I want the contributions that I make to be ones that wouldn’t otherwise happen without me. To do this I realized that I needed a unique perspective and an even greater depth of understanding of healthcare problems.

Here comes in my personal desires. Throughout taking the program, I had to use half of my vacation for 2 years on Friday classes. I love to travel and this caused me not to get as much travel in as I would like. You could say I had a travel drought. Getting out of the program and where I was at in life made me desire doing a long, extended trip around the world. I am talking a many months trip where I would have the time to immerse myself as much as I could into each country. Here is when the crazy idea popped into my head.

What if I could combine my professional and personal desires to do a purpose based trip that would give me a unique perspective on healthcare?

Almost a year later I decided to follow that crazy idea.

The Medical Device Innovation program gave me the skills and confidence to leave the security of a good paying at a top medical device company to pursue my passion of exploring the healthcare needs of the world. Would I be doing this trip with my Volkswagen emissions scandal money if I hadn’t taken this program? Probably. Would I be studying how countries practice medicine? Most likely not. I guess you could say the program caused me to quit my job 🙂

Early on, I jotted down a list of some of the reasons I am taking this journey and what I hope to get out of this. There were both professional and personal reasons so I split them accordingly.

Professional

• I want to better understand how healthcare is delivered and the problems with it.
• How do these problems differ in other countries? Where are there similarities?
• How do countries with few resources deliver care vs. those with many?
• I want to expand my perspective of health to the world. Can I create a unique perspective?
• I want to make connections with others who want to help people around the world.
• I am looking for inspirations and experiences to draw off of for future innovations.

Personal

• I want to challenge myself, Medtronic was getting too comfortable.
• I want to learn how to travel for more than 3 weeks at a time.
• I want to see the world before I get older and start settling down.
• I want to try amazing foods (totally a foodie).
• I want to learn more about SE Asia and Africa and their diverse cultures.
• I want to prove that I am capable of planning and executing an expedition such as this.

 

Please let me know what you think in the comments below! Thanks for reading!