“It’s not only about medical knowledge, but more into the realm of marketing, business acumen, knowing how to build a company, experience in dealing with venture capital and understanding regulatory challenges in Australia and overseas.”

Stuart Dignam, CEO of MTPConnect

Enter Professor Willa Huston, associate dean of teaching and learning at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Faculty of Science, where a new online master of medical science leadership course is specifically designed to fix the problems that Dignam identifies.

Huston, a world-renowned leader in microbiology, says her background working with clinicians and industry on new diagnostic tests and understanding how the treatment of diseases progresses, influenced the design of the online course.

“I could see this gap between medical scientists and marketers or product managers from industry, and the need to build bridges that would take medical innovations into wide stream use,” she says.

“I was also reading papers on the government wanting Australia to lead in medical science, but we needed the right workforce to do that.”

First-of-its-kind degree that empowers science leadership

The master of medical science leadership is the first online degree of its kind and has nine core subjects covering areas such as precision medicine, medical science innovations, science and big data, shaping future policies, communicating science and vision, public engagement and high-performance science leadership.

“We’re trying to shift the focus on scientists just being in labs, but having their thinking — that particular special way scientists think — trained to communicate and lead so they can become influential leaders in a range of settings.”

Willa Huston, associate dean of teaching and learning at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Faculty of Science

To focus their future career in a particular area, students can also choose three elective subjects from 18 possibilities; for example, delivering customer value, artificial intelligence, business administration and analytics, global health systems, using healthcare data for decision making, or building enterprise agility.

The course is open to anyone with a bachelor’s or higher degree in a large number of medically related areas, including general practice, nursing, laboratory technology, occupational therapy, food science and audiology — to name just a few.

Wide application, not just a piece of paper

The professor says she sees graduates filling a wide range of medical leadership roles — from marketing management or overseeing clinical trials, to taking charge of a scientific discovery all the way from the laboratory to the market.

“The online course is tailored for people who are already working full-time and takes about 18 months to complete,” she says. “You do one subject at a time, and it provides flexible ways of learning, allowing you to take a break or go on holidays if you wish.

“I see people who are career shifters taking the course; they might just have an entrepreneurial spirit, be really strong innovators in science who have a device or technology they want to move across to industry. Perhaps they want to be in a policy setting or lead in an administration environment.

“We’re trying to shift the focus on scientists just being in labs, but having their thinking — that particular special way scientists think — trained to communicate and lead so they can become influential leaders in a range of settings.

“We see things like energy, sustainability and other areas such as artificial intelligence where we need a broader set of leaders who can think differently at the table, and we believe scientists are part of that solution.”

Discover more at UTS Online.