Welcome to the 2nd Cohort of the MSc in Health Management & Data Intelligence program!
On the 25th of September, emlyon business school and Mines Saint Etienne welcomed the 2nd cohort of the MSc in Health Management & Data Intelligence program. 49 students from 18 nationalities and different educational and professional backgrounds have started the program, with the goal of gaining essential skills needed to lead innovation in the health industry today.
The students participated in a conference with Health Data Hub, a public entity attached to the French Ministry of Health. “We are proud that the French Ministry of Health sponsor this program, it shows how relevant it is to the current health industry,” says Program Director Professor Florencio Travieso.
The theme of this year is the celebration of women in digital health. The program is putting the accent on how important women are in the industry. The cohort itself is made up of 60% women! , and most of the professors and instructors are women.
To honor this theme, this year the sponsor of the program is Stephanie Combes, the Director of the Health Data Hub. She addressed the students during the kick-off via video, happily accepting her mission.
In the morning session there were two round tables:
In the first panel, the role of women in health and AI was discussed. The panelists were:
- Laura Galindo, from OECD (AI Policy Relgulation)
- Fanny Rigault, Head of Talent Acquisition at Roche
- Axelle N’Ciri, CEO and founder of Mapatho and author of the book “Lonely Patient”.
Laura Galindo, from OECD referred to the importance of gender variety in the development of public policies. From a talent acquisition perspective, Fanny Rigault stressed that in the health and pharmaceutical sector the multidisciplinary roles are crucial. Axelle N’Ciri explained the path to emerge as a woman entrepreneurs in a very masculine environment.
During our second round table, students were able to get a glimpse of the academic experience in the Master program with the participation of:
- Professor Nathalie Douard from the Ecole des Mines Saint-Etienne
- Professor Heloise Agréli from emlyon business school
- Karina Quaioit, MSc in Health Management & Data Intelligence graduate from 2019, intern at Inova Software
The professors discussed on the challenge and the value of interacting with students not only from different countries but from different backgrounds, which makes the exchanges very rich.
Finally, from a perspective of a 2019 student, Karina stressed the value of the variety of scientific and business courses throughout the year.
“With this very multidisciplinary environment, you really maximize your opportunity to learn, and this is what helped me to find my internship, as I could show I was able to show a broader set of skills. I became a very unique candidate for internships”.
The key note address in the afternoon was made by Professor Emmanuel Bacry, Chief Scientific Officer at Health Data Hub who spoke about healthcare and AI. The conference discussed how AI is being key for transforming not only health therapeutics, but also how the handling of big data is turning the healthcare sector in the one of the most promising in the current industry. He discussed the role of ethics in handling data in AI and the need of finding ways of interoperability between databases at a European Union level first and, hopefully, the world.
“Interoperability (of data among databases) is a major issue, and we’re very far from an optimal point. In the era of big data, the key is to integrate more sources of data and join them, obtaining richer information (genomic and images and biological databases integration) and this is where AI can make a huge progress.”
Finally, Professor Bacry mentioned what kind of professionals the industry requires today.
“One thing that is extremely important –and that we don’t see enough today- we need people that understand the whole ecosystem, what AI is about, not just data scientists. We need people that understand AI from a technical point of view, what health data is and its ethical implications. This is crucial. Interdisciplinary is the master word, together with ethics and data”, he expressed, and our students felt confident, knowing that their profiles will be of high interest in the future.
emlyon business school and Mines Saint Etienne are excited to watch the students learn, innovate and work together to become future leaders of the health industry!
