For our alumni newsletter, we talk to former students about their time at ESHPM and their subsequent careers. In this edition, we follow Kailesh Bansi, from his early days as a Biomedical Sciences student to his current position as an information architect at the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL).
You have had an unusual career path for a Health Policy & Management alumnus. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Most alumni do indeed go on to become consultants or policymakers. That’s why I don’t see many fellow alumni in my field of work. That might have something to do with my background. I sort of stumbled into the programme by chance. I’d failed the Biomedical Sciences programme in Amsterdam and wanted to do something else. A friend of mine was studying for a bachelor's degree in Gezondheidswetenschappen, BMG (Health Policy & Management) in Rotterdam and asked if that might be something I’d be interested in as well. It was practically the opposite of Biomedical Sciences: from the micro level to the macro level.
At first, I liked the fact that Gezondheidswetenschappen was so multidisciplinary. We explored different perspectives on healthcare – things you wouldn’t know as an ordinary member of the public. Take Dunning’s funnel, for instance, which is used to assess whether new treatments should be included in the basic health insurance package. Concepts like that are very useful, wherever you end up working in the medical sector.
However, what initially seemed like an advantage – the broad scope – actually turned out to be a pitfall for me later on. We didn’t explore subjects in great depth, which I thought was a shame. I struggled to finish my thesis, and it took me five years to obtain my bachelor's degree.
Nevertheless, you went on to do a master's degree in Healthcare Policy Innovation Management in Maastricht.
Yes, that was a bit more… hands-on. They specifically looked at the innovation aspect, and that suited me better. For example, the programme dealt with new treatments that needed to be incorporated into policy – at the national, international or even European level. At the time, we looked at the use of ketamine as an antidepressant. It had already been used in this way in Spain and the United States for a while, and we looked into how it might be incorporated into Dutch policy. Really interesting stuff!
And then, towards the end of the academic year, the coronavirus pandemic hit and everything shut down. I suddenly found myself back at my parents’ house in Zoetermeer. Fortunately, I was able to complete my thesis, but I’d failed one course and had to retake it the following year to obtain my master's degree.
As I didn’t have much to do for the rest of that year, I decided to look for a job. Although most job vacancies called for a completed master's degree, one employer was willing to offer me a position: the Association of Health Care Providers for Health Care Communication (VZVZ). At VZVZ, they told me: “We’re hiring you for a position appropriate for someone who has completed senior secondary vocational education, but we’ll include a clause in your contract stating that you’ll be moved to a different position as soon as you obtain your master's degree.” That came at exactly the right time. I started working as a project manager’s assistant with a wide variety of duties, from setting up meetings and organising symposia to elaborating drafts.
I realised that my ambition lay precisely in that process of elaborating. After all, that was what I’d been trained to do. By the time I obtained my master's degree, I’d carried out a thorough analysis of the organisation and the positions within it. This caught my colleagues’ attention, and I found myself talking to business and solution architects within the organisation. What they did was so detailed and yet simultaneously so comprehensive that I immediately told my manager: I want to become an architect. After a kind of taster placement and the necessary programmes and courses, I became a business architect.
But that was not the end of your journey. You now work somewhere else.
Yes, at one point I saw a job vacancy at the IKNL. They were looking for an information architect, which was even more my cup of tea. Whereas business architects focus on the why and how of the organisation, information architects focus more on the what of the data. In other words, they go into even greater detail.
Do you still find your bachelor's degree useful in your current position?
In the end, a lot of the knowledge I gained during my studies turned out to be useful after all. It’s really useful to understand how our health care system is organised and what the landscape looks like. It’s incredibly fragmented. The fact that I understand the legal side of things is useful as well, of course, because we’re now seeing a great number of policies being initiated at the European level, such as the European Health Data Space (EHDS). That’s going to create a lot of work, so it’s good to have been introduced to it already during your programme. I think it’s unfortunate that, at the time, I didn’t see all the options my degree presented. That made it more difficult to take the next steps.
What advice would you give to alumni who are now entering the labour market?
Some people may already know exactly what they want, but if you’re still trying to work out what suits you, I’d say: just try things out! Even though my first position was at senior secondary vocational education level, I did gain a great deal of relevant experience there.
What I often notice among young people in our organisation is that they immediately fall in line with the mindset of the rest of the group, but what we need are new perspectives and a fresh outlook. Ask questions, share your views when there’s room to do so, show initiative and be creative and unique. Your ideas might be exactly what your managers are looking for. So, what I’d like to say to recent graduates is this: don’t just become like everyone else – stay curious and inquisitive. Search for jobs based on your areas of interest, rather than solely by job titles. That way, you’ll be sure to end up doing something that really suits you.
In conversation with… you?
If you have any special memories of your time at SAG/iBMG/ESHPM that you would like to share with fellow alumni, or you have chosen an interesting career path since completing your programme, get in touch with us by sending an email to alumni@eshpm.eur.nl.
