Kun Kim
- International Student from South Korea
- Master candidate in Health Economics, Policy and Management
- Year of graduation: spring 2009
- Occupation: Research analyst at Innovus, office located in Stockholm.
What you do in your current job?
I am a research analyst working for Innovus which is a consulting firm for pharmaceuticals. The mother company of the firm is the United-Health Group in US and it has hundreds of branches over the world. My office in Stockholm is the largest one in Europe. I started working only a month ago so currently I do not have many tasks as other colleagues. What I'm doing now is basically literature reviews of cancer projects. I am also supposed to work with data collecting for economic modeling and statistical data analysis as documented in job description.
How did you get the job?
On internet search. If you search "health economics" in web-base job agencies, you can find relevant hits, mostly in the US and the UK. I got a call from a human resource department in the UK and had an interview for about 15 minutes. 2 weeks later, I had a phone interview with the vice president for 40 minutes. 2 weeks later again, I had face-to-face interview for 5 hours in Stockholm (the company paid the flight tickets) and I got the job offer after the interview.
To what extent is the knowledge you acquired through your studies at the Institute of Health Management and Health Economics relevant to your current job?
First of all, economic evaluation: cost effectiveness / cost benefit analysis are very relevant. The course, Health and Medicine is relevant too, to understand disease and treatments. In general, knowledge on health care systems and policies are helpful, too for any types of studies in this field. Also software programmes such as SPSS, TreeAge pro, Reference Manager, and PubMed search skill are much recommended.
How are the possibilities of developing your skills in your current job?
The company pays for attending academic seminars. According to what I heard from my colleagues, a researcher attends international seminars once or twice a year. In this month, we are going to have training sessions called "book camp", and this programme covers what I need to learn for work. One-third of employees in work now are having Ph.D studies connected to Karolinska University.