For students attending the Joint Master's Programme in Health Informatics All about writing your master thesis
As a grand finale on every master's programme, all students need to complete a 30 credits master thesis project. Many students' express anxiety and stress about this work already in their first year, and therefore we have asked our examiner on our programme what you as a student should think about to keep calm and prepare.
Sabine Koch, Course leader, Health Informatics masters
You are the examiner for the thesis on the master's program in Health Informatics. Can you briefly describe what the thesis process looks like in the HI program?
As the Health Informatics program is a joint program between KI and Stockholm University, we offer two master thesis courses, one at each university. Students can choose at which university to enrol. This decision is made based on the affiliation of the main supervisor who works at one of the two universities.
Students enrolled in the KI course usually pick one of the topics that are offered by KI teachers or researchers, find their own topic in one of KI’s many research groups, at a company or a healthcare provider, or they do their thesis at a university abroad. During the course we have different milestones where we discuss the progress of each student’s work in smaller seminar groups and students also get written feedback by thesis reviewers at different points in time.
In which areas can you write your thesis?
Health Informatics as a discipline is quite broad and our students do their thesis work in very different areas such as: design and development of digital solutions, usability and user experience evaluation, digital health implementation processes, integration and interoperability including health informatics standardization, and artificial intelligence.
As a student, how can you best prepare for the thesis course?
The master thesis is an opportunity to apply the knowledge that you have gained throughout the program but also a great opportunity to prepare for your future.
- What subjects during the program appeal most to you?
- Do you want to work in the tech industry, at a healthcare provider, or do research in the field?
- Do you want to gather some more experience in another country and do your thesis abroad?
These are some questions that you might want to reflect upon yourself. It will help you finding a topic and environment that fits your needs.
Do some literature research once you have decided your topic so you get an overview of related work and can pinpoint the specific problem you want to tackle. The most common mistake is that students try to grasp too broad. They want to solve many problems, but that’s just not feasible to do in the context of a master thesis. Look at previous master theses to get a feeling for what is expected.
What is your most important piece of advice for our year 1 students, who will be starting their thesis work next year?
Do not panic! Chose a topic that really interests you and you will do a good job! Apart from that: Read the instructions and engage in the different seminars that are offered during the course to discuss your progress with your peers.
We have all been students once upon a time. How do you remember your own thesis work and what did you write about?
My own thesis work was the reason I went to Sweden. I had no previous relation to Sweden and getting there in the middle of a dark and rainy November was perhaps not the best first encounter to wish for. “I can cope with this for half a year”, I said to myself. In fact, it was the start of an exciting and challenging journey working with the world leading dental informatics researchers at that time.
My thesis work consisted of developing algorithms to assess the quality of digital intraoral radiographs automatically. I stayed longer than the planned six months and those who want to read more about my journey can look it up in the International Journal on Biomedicine and Healthcare.