16. Salomé Azevedo - Biomedical Engineer & PhD Student

 'When you have goals, it’s easy to be resilient because you know the outcome you want to achieve.’ Salome Azevedo is a PhD Student & Head of Digital Health, Value for Health CoLAB based in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Salomé Azevedo is a Portuguese BioMedical Engineer who works in the English language and lives most of her personal life in Portuguese. Her home base is Lisbon, Portugal. Salomé’s work has a global impact as she and her team seek to find innovative ways to link technology and healthcare. Her mandate is to accelerate knowledge transfer between academia and industry. Salomé discusses the challenges of working in two worlds where each has differing indicators of success and must collaborate for the greater good. At the same time, Salomé is a PhD student with a realistic view of the challenges related to that choice. As she says, (in a good way!), “think twice” before going for a PhD.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. 

For more information on Value for Health CoLAB go here:  https://vohcolab.org  

  More on Ford Keast can be found here: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/

& for all the podcast information visit our website: https://www.career-resilience.com/

If you enjoyed this podcast and need support in your own career resilience please do get in contact with Jann at HR@fordkeast.com

We would love to hear from you!

Want to show your support? Subscribe and leave a review!

Thank you
Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience. 

Transcript

00:11 | Hello and welcome to our series Career Resilience, where we talk with people about the career path and their career journey, maybe we can all learn from each other. My name is Jann Danyluk and I'm a human resources professional in London, Ontario, Canada.

00:28 | I work with Quirkiest LLP and I work with my clients to help them with the HRA side of their business. We hope that you will enjoy these discussions with real people about real challenges and real working life situations. Welcome. My guest today is Salomé Azevedo. Welcome, Salomé. Hello and welcome. Thank you for receiving me in this conversation. It is wonderful to have you here.

00:56 | And we have a variety of things we're going to be chatting about, including I'd like to talk about English not being your first language. Let's chat about that for a couple of minutes, about your academic background and about your work background. And we'll talk about career resilience in terms of fitting in in the job. So so those are our plans for our discussion today. But first of all, we're actually are you in the world right now ? Lisbon, Portugal.

01:25 | You're in Lisbon, Portugal, and I'm in London, Ontario, Canada, where if I look out the window, there is just snow everywhere. So if you look out the window, what do you see ? It's a perfect, perfect sunny day today. So be right raining and raining for the last two months and these last two days, the sun has come out and it's beautiful. So I think everyone is very happy because it's a little chilly here.

01:54 | So I wanted to talk about where did you pick up your English ? So now in Portugal, since we are, I think, nine or 10 years old, we start learning English officially at school. So in a public school. But my parents wanted to for me to have an advance learning in English.
02:17 | So getting to to to get to know more about the language and use it because they thought that back in the time and so we were talking about nine in the nineties, now it would be English was going to be the first language in the world. So they just wanted for me to go deeper into the language.

02:39 | And when I was 12 or 13, I started going for the Cambridge courses that are I don't know if you are aware of it, but in countries that don't speak English, they have these kinds of courses and you do it in your extra time after school. So it started there. And then they also gave me the opportunity to go for two times in the summer to the summer schools in the U.K.

03:10 | So no one near London to have the experience of how to live in the UK. And it was like summer schools, like between two weeks to one month, something like that. So the experience was basically very triggered by my parents. And then because we consume American TV and all the culture that reaches Portugal is it's well, that on English, everything then was basic.

03:47 | On movies and series, everything is translated to Portuguese subtitles. So you get to get into the culture is easier compared to Spain maybe or to France. In here you start listening in national television English very, very soon. OK, I wanted to ask you, does it take bravery to use another language or it's just no big deal to you, whether you're speaking Portuguese or English, but it depends on the topic.

04:17 | So in my work, I everything that I produce, it must be in English. So you get to to be almost the first when you think you are already thinking in English, you know, but when you start talking about yourself or what you like to do or you know, more in the personal life, Portuguese becomes first.

04:39 | And then when you have to be like this kind of format with you more getting to know each other, Portuguese or the expressions or the them that sometimes you want to make a point Portuguese. I think it's brave you when you try to do it in English, but it's not it's it can be tough for you to express some feelings that you have. But I think it's good because it's it's kind of.

05:11 | An effort to show the others that you want to communicate to them, I have to say that I think it's very brave and I but I do think that sometimes it's a cultural difference because over here, maybe because the landmass is so huge, we speak English and of course, we speak French because we're in Canada. But the trouble is that sometimes we're not brave enough to speak in the other language. And I think that that's different in Europe because you're the landmass is so near, you're near everybody.

05:42 | So all these different languages. And so that's what seems to have been my take on it. Let's switch over to your academic background. So tell me about your education. I always loved the sciences. I really enjoy art. It's one of my interests. But I never wanted to pursue it as work. So I always like to do it for free. Yes. And it's something that amazes me and makes me dream.

06:12 | But to work, I always thought about more like in engineering or even medicine. So I was looking for them the scientific part already. And I was very intrigued by my father. So my father is a civil engineer and he always pushed me a lot in trying to see the world as an engineer, even if it doesn't say it. But it was true. I was a kid. It was always trying like, let's try to destroy this and come up with a solution for that.

06:43 | And so my mother was not always happy when we tried to assemble the objects that we have in our place. But I always like to see him working and the way that he thought about the project. So so I thought I think I won that very early in my life. So it was really easy to decide that I wanted to go to engineering back in high school. But I was not so sure about which kind of engineering because I really loved sports.

07:16 | I always I've always done sports all my life. So I wanted to kind of match engineering with sports. But it was really strange, the idea. And my father was searching for four universities for me and he found a love like biomedical engineer must be the thing for you because it's going to mix technology with health care and you love technology. I always love technology and I work. How does it work and how can I apply it and how can I make it better ?

07:46 | So you also like sports and they are coming up with a new professional career that will touch all these things. And I'm very optimistic. That's a thing that now I'm trying to be more realistic because it's good to be optimistic. But not being enough realistic can make you can put you in trouble. So I remain so dreaming a lot about the way this is going to be amazing, you know, engineering, getting into health care, trying to improve the human body.

08:18 | I thought about like more scientific fiction than what it actually is. So when I started the course, did biomedical engineering here in Lisbon, a technical I had one expectation that was completely different from the reality. And that was it was like another stage of my life. Are you a very competitive person, Salumi ? Yeah, very.

08:47 | But I'm not I don't believe it's not a negative, not in a bad way. I always played team sports, so it was always to make the team win. Not and not. I never competed individually and I'm not very good at competing individually. Also, I get a lot of pressure and I start questioning myself because I had the support of the team to go for it. But yes, I'm a competitor. I like to do it. Must be good. So OK, it's OK.

09:16 | So let's switch over to work then. What do you do for a living ? So now I have a digital health at local level which is valid for health. Believe it's a new kind of organization that the European Union is supporting to get.

09:37 | Highly specialized people to work both to work for both academia and industry, so trying to accelerate knowledge transfer between academics and the industry to develop solutions faster and with the new mechanisms so that actually the industry can innovate faster, can apply solutions to the society.

10:00 | So this organization started two years ago and we are in the first period of evaluation to see if everything's going to to work. They will let the organization grow. And my focus is so I'm responsible of the team that is actually designing new services for health care digitally. So I think it's easier to get to a point there to get a real case.

10:29 | And patients that were submitted to a cardiothoracic surgery that are in the hospital, they should be it would be safer for them to recover at home because they would not be risking a new infection and so on. But most of the time, they don't go because the physicians cannot control all the symptoms that they have.

10:53 | So what we came up with the solution last year that we are still testing and seeing if everything works really well under real world conditions is to give a small kit of devices to to to to the patients. They're very simple. It's like a scale and blood pressure unit, a thermometer and that sort of thing. Yes. And an app. So a mobile app.

11:22 | And they go home earlier and they can stay at home recovering, but they have to measure every day two or three times their vital signs. And the doctor receives everything. So if something happens, something changes drastically. They are going to go to the hospital faster. And it's better because they feel safer at home than in the hospital. They're more comfortable they are with their family.

11:47 | OK, so is the big thing about that, Selimi, that the vitals are provided to the doctor through the app, not just the person alone saying, oh, that looks OK or think that's OK, come on, it's tracked. OK, that's a huge innovation, isn't it ? So you're bridging your bridging academia and this. Yeah. Yes. OK, what is that like? Because I see those as two very different worlds.

12:18 | Yeah. Completely. It's, it can be really exciting and can be really frustrating depending on the day and depending on the people because the problem is that you are dealing with people regardless of the world that they come from. They, they it's people. And when you have proactive people, very interesting in getting into a point of a solution, you don't see that. You just see the difference in the way they think, but they are engaged to the project.

12:47 | The other problem when joining this two kind of wars is, one, they have prejudiced against each other already. You know, it's like they have already some free concepts about the other and they start the meeting already not trying to collaborate. I think I was lucky to to meet very good people on both sides and see that you can reach that point. You have to change their way of thinking, changing culture also.

13:18 | And it but it's interesting to see because academics, they move, they are moved, they're moved by publishing articles and their scientific credibility and everything to be really rigorous. And it's a lot of work trying to come up with methods and pursue work that is very rigorous on the other side in the industry. They have to do it everything as well as better as they can.

13:47 | But in the less time possible, yes, the pressure for from another kind of triggers. So when you have different indicators of their success, it's when they collapse because one is all their lives. They had time they don't have and they want regrets. And the other they want quality, but they don't need to be very rigorous about it. So it's. Yeah. Which world are you more comfortable in.

14:17 | So it it also depends which I think it's the problem in here, because I'm not I'm not an academic as we look for professors that to use to talk to us on a university that all their lives were in their office conducting highly quality research and getting the resulting papers published in the best journals in the world, I'm more like a practical person.

14:46 | I like the both sides, the best of both worlds, worlds. And I cannot understand why it's not is it not that possible to do it ? Because I, I like applied research. So it's like I want to do research to solve problems that are under scrutiny now. But I also understand that a lot of people in the world want to solve problems that will come up in a few years at how the science works to so.

15:23 | I would think that I don't belong to either of the worlds, because I think I believe I'm from from a generation that is trying to to mix both worlds and we are trying to come up with new new things in it. But I like I like more the academic side because it you can think anywhere that you can have time to think about it and to test.

15:50 | And in the industry you are you are more restricted. You don't have that time. So it's it's difficult and you have to make a lot of decisions very quickly and take that responsibility. So I don't know if I would go for the academic. I think I wanted to ask you in terms of resilience. So I think you have a very challenging job because you are bridging worlds here and doing such important work is how so for resilience?

16:24 | How do you deal with the stress of the. OK. I wish I knew, but not now that I think daily it's because when you have goals in your head, it's easy to to to be resilient because you know where you want to reach. I think when we start losing, our hope is when we don't see the end point, the end game, how how is it going to be ? So when I start feeling that I might let it go and I'm going to give up its let's focus.

16:57 | Let's sit down again. And what is the goal of the project ? What is the what am I going to do in the end ? What is the outcome that I want to achieve ? And when you stop for a minute and you do that, everything becomes again eager to fight again for, you know, but that's my that's my strategy doesn't work all the time. But as you are dealing with so, so much different people all the time because it was so patience. Right.

17:26 | And informal caregivers, we have to interact with them and we have promised a solution for them. And it's no longer a published article or it's no longer a sales on the other side. It's it's something it's a solution for people. So usually what we do and some of my colleagues say the same thing is when we start seeing that a lot of people are trying to mess up with a project is this is for the patient. So let's focus on the patients and make everything that we can for them.

17:57 | And that's also a good trigger for us. I think if you go for it and keep going and being resilient. Yeah, I like that idea of focusing on the goal and focusing on the on the patient, the individual. So that brings it down to human beings. Right. And the goal of what are we really trying to achieve here, which I think from the choice that you've made in terms of your career, makes total sense, doesn't it ?

18:29 | It kind of all flows from when you and your father were tearing things apart and building them back up again. Yet if you'll go there, you'll go to that bubble again. You know, it's it makes sense. So let's do it again and get better and. Well, are you also getting your Ph.D. ? Yeah, tell me about that. So, yeah. So that's that's the problem of fitting in. I never wanted to go for a PhD and never so never thought about it.

19:00 | I was like, I don't want to study all my life. And I was never it was never on my mind. But when I started working and stopped working in a beautiful project, I it's called Patient Innovation. And it was developing a platform, an online platform where patients could share solutions they have developed from all over the world. And I was the platform manager of the platform and the my boss was also a professor in a university lecture, was one in a business school and another in a medical school.

19:34 | And they were always like you. You like to do research. You just don't know that that's research. But you are doing it. So you should go for a fee. And I like I am not going to pitch because I never wanted to do this, but I'd like to do research. And if you like to do research in this world, you have to take a page. And it was a struggle that we fought a lot for two or three years. I remember they were like, please tell me you have to do it.

20:00 | You have to do it because you are you are very competitive and you are going to see people going in front of you because they have a page and you're not and you're going to lose the project because you don't have it. So and here in Portugal, everything is so there not a lot of vacancies for four professors or four researchers. Everything is very precarious in in Portugal, in academic life. I never saw it as a goal because I knew how there the minimal probability to get a position in university was very low.

20:33 | So if you are not the A student of your class, you don't even think about it because it doesn't make sense. But things changed a lot in these last years, not because they opened new vacancies because they started investing in trying to make people more specialized. So getting to have a Ph.D. and having the opportunity to work in the industry, too, so you can still do research but working in the industry, so you are not dependent on new job openings or in the job market of universities.

21:07 | And that was why I decided to go for it. It was like that. That makes more sense now. So I want to it's something there. I can go for it. I like to do what I do. So let's let's go professional about it then. And I start doing the pitch two years ago in engineering and management because I. And see myself any more, just an engineer.

21:32 | I also like to see the bigger picture of all the solutions that we were designing or we were developing and management was becoming really interesting for me in terms of strategy and health care as a system. So when I when I got deeper in health care, I thought like, no, the problem is that we are just looking only for illnesses, only for from one perspective. And the problem is that health care works as a system.

22:01 | So that has a lot of people inside that have that want different goals, that also have different benefits from the system. And you have if you want to implement better health care or to if you want to get new interventions to to our people, you have to know how the system works or how what is the strategy, what is the game. And and that's what I wanted to go for the management. And I was really cool.

22:30 | So you wanted to take a really holistic approach to the to the work and to your career in Portugal. We were in on a crisis versus a very strong crisis in 2008. So it was when we started going to university, we knew that the probability to have a job when we finished university, regardless if you were outstanding or not, would be very low and you have to leave the country and go to have to work outside.

22:57 | So we always were very afraid of not getting a job when we finished university. So when we got one, everyone was like, give your best. You have to work really, really hard and you have to give extra hours even if they don't pay you. And all this kind of mentality that was in our generation. Mathus, go for that and the week to be the best because we could go like this.

23:25 | So I think because I have cousins that are younger than me and they they don't think in the same way. They are not afraid of the same things that we were afraid like six years ago or seven years ago. So it's kind of interesting to see that what comes up in their heads, it's, you know, that that company can give you like they have very good offices.

23:52 | You know, it's like it's they have free time for the employees to play games in the in the office. They have Friday nights, we Friday nights. And they are looking for those kind of social relationships that we were not even they were that was not even in our mind to think about when we were looking for a company to work, you know, like they're looking for criteria that in my mind, I don't even know where to.

24:21 | But it's that it's like the experience that they can get from from the company or from who. It's very funny and beautiful. I think it's better to look for look for that. Where you think that's better ? Yeah, way better because you're going to spend eight hours of your day or ten hours of your day in there. So if you're not looking for an experience, you're becoming a role after a while. And and I think they looking for the experience.

24:52 | I think it's better. It's you look back and you see we are. Where are we going ? We are we have progress in here. So it's good job. Do you think you would really enjoy that environment given the driven person that you are ? That's a very good question. I don't know, because I like to separate things. So when I'm I'm having fun and I'm working what I like to have fun and work. So I would say, yes, it depends on the mix.

25:22 | So if it becomes to party going, I wouldn't I would like to, but still have the social part. I think it would be better because you get to know other people and learn with, you know, that's true. I wanted to ask you if somebody is thinking, listening to you of taking their Ph.D., what would you say to them ? What would your advice be ?

25:51 | Think twice, but not in the not in the best sense, it's a decision, it's an important decision to make because it's a commitment to yourself, not to anyone. It's just a commitment to ourselves. The pitch, the only depends on me to finish not it only depends on me to be good at it. And it's a lonely career in the sense that it's you are your own boss in the the stage.

26:22 | So when the days become a little colder and you are just a little bit sad, there's not going to be anyone cheering up and say, let's go do it, let's let's go for it. And it's going to be tough. Now, it depends on you to wake up and say, I'm going to work on this and it's going to be very good. And you you have to be.

26:46 | I remember one professor telling me that you have to be very close to a math person because you have to be always trying to see how much fun you will get if you go for that path. And in the end, you know that it's not going to be so funny at all. But you have to motivate yourself constantly and to see the best part of the world know everything you do. Otherwise, you are looking at that in desperation.

27:16 | You're not going to to want to go for the end of it. You will give up, you will blame everyone except you that you couldn't do it. And and it's tough. And if you are not I was not mature when they asked when they told me to do this for the first time. And I knew that because I was immature to the point that I knew this was my outcome only.

27:43 | So if I don't go further and know that I have to face it by myself, I'm going to be the one to suffer. And I hate it to have that in my mind all the time that I will quit. I will quit, I will quit, would make me make me crazy. So for a person that would want to do a need to read a lot, a lot of experience from others, I did that. So I search for all the forums, Cuarón, Revit, a lot of these students share their their experiences online.

28:17 | And when I like some kind of research, I would ask what was the how was it ? Everyone says it's tough and there is no no problem. But if you really want to do it, you would split that in a lot of stages and share every conker that you make and see it as a progress in in yourself to read. Because from two years ago, I'm a completely different person, not so stressed about it.

28:48 | If I cannot do it. I know. And it's it's not because I didn't try it, because I couldn't do it. And I'm not mad at me because of that. And as a student, you have to be really sure about it. So you're going to do a lot of things wrong and you cannot blame yourself because if you've done it wrong, you have to learn it fast and not doing it again. So, yeah, think twice and read a lot of opinions and see if you are the kind of person that wants to to go for that kind of path.

29:20 | I think it's that. Yeah. Yeah. Now how long do you have to go till you get your data. You get your designation. So if everything goes well as we planned in the beginning, two more years. So it's a four year between four years and five years. The other thing in my university, you cannot take more than five and you you four and five was the four is my plan as far as I'm working it.

29:50 | So two more years. Do you will you end up doing a thesis ? Yes, I'm already doing it. So it's one year of curriculum, so courses and courses and then three years going for the thesis. And what is your thesis on. So it's it's it's it's very difficult to answer that question. It's it's like this. So I see the survey, the, the, the state call.

30:18 | I look at this as stakeholders. So I'm really I really like strategy and it's based on the cost benefit of each stakeholder to get into to get and play the game and the game. In this case, it's to provide digital health care service. So getting together to to to develop this kind of product or service and see what it takes, what are the thresholds between costs and benefits that each stakeholder ?

30:51 | Faceoffs to revive this kind of service search game theory, multiple, multiple criteria analysis and stakeholder analysis, and you are like trying to play along along. And it's very interesting because I get the chance to interview a lot of stakeholders and very different stakeholders from industry among academics to even patients and caregivers, because so my my hypothesis is that patients don't adopt technology because they don't see the actual benefit from the technology.

31:24 | When they see it, they will accept, they will adopt. And one of the benefits is that your physician is. In the game and wants to you to have the technology to adopt, so I'm trying to test all this both. And if it's if if we get some point, you will know, well, what are the drivers that make a patient accept a specific technology and and provide and engage with the health care solution ?

31:57 | Well, I love that, because that's that bridging you're talking about, isn't it ? So I see you as a very passionate person and I think that's amazing. And we're so lucky to have people like you that are working on these kinds of things because you're helping all of us globally. You do realize that ? Does that sink in with you ?

32:21 | And also the way I think it's the part when you become a math person, there are some points in the week that you have to believe in that have to get to because otherwise you would give up in our daily lives. I don't you don't see that because you can't just focus on getting getting there and getting to understand the system and health care. It's it's so difficult. It's just such a complex problem to solve that when you are there and you don't see a patient for a while, you totally forget that this is for people.

32:53 | So to be honest, you don't see that in your daily life when you get to get the patient or you get to talk with a person outside of your world and you tell them what you do and you see that expression that makes you happy because it's like how cool they were, like they would like to forget. Well, that's true, isn't it ? We're stuck in the minutia of it, not realizing the huge impact that while someone like yourself can have.

33:23 | And I tell you, just speaking personally, I'm just so grateful that there's people like you that are out there doing this kind of work, which I know and I think we can all tell is not is not an easy path that you've chosen, but it's it's a wonderful path that you've chosen. Is there anything before we wrap up that you would like to say or any thing that you wanted to bring out today ? I would like to say that actually, because you are from Canada and Canada, it's it's a very inspiring country and kind of health care for us.

33:58 | Even even if we don't have the same system, we are not similar at all. But in my area of research, in my area of work, Canada is always as is presented as a very real model for a country that invests in technology and trying to make the best out of a community. And what I learned a lot doing reading from a Canadian researcher, is that you bet a lot in terms of community.

34:30 | So the care for the community and it's something that I really enjoy. So if people are listening from Canada and they like it in your country, it's one of my best full of sources, full of resources to explore because you see people not individual as individuals. You see people as a community and try to build for smaller communities because you are such a huge country and makes it even more complex.

35:01 | But you you have sometimes cities that are as big as our country is my country. And you certainly solve the problem by breaking it in small communities and trying to get the best of out of the community. Yeah. So that I would like to to have the opportunity to to say that Canada in that sense, as always, mark me, is Canada and Australia with Canada, because it's it it has a lot of very good examples of how to manage health care.

35:32 | And I really like it. I think that we're so lucky to have the health care system that we have where it focuses on health care. And, you know, obviously any system has its challenges. But we know that when we're ill, we're going to be taken care of. And we also don't have to worry about getting a huge bill at the end of being taken care of, too, because that ways with people right. As to what they're going to do about their health care if they know they're going to have to pay a fortune for it.

36:02 | And so I think we're really we're really proud of that. I have to tell you, Salimata, London, Ontario, is is a very well known health care center in our country. People come from all over to be part of the work here, either academically or patients or whatever. We're very blessed in this city to have such an incredible health care focus and environment.
36:33 | So, listen, if you ever decide that you want to move to London, Ontario, Canada, and help us out with all that, I'll I'll meet you at the airport. So I'll make you a visit for sure. But no, I hope so. And that's that's the problem with covid. When I start the day, I have a huge planning of going to good places to learn more, because that's that's how you also get to know the people that are working in these places.

36:57 | Is it as your knowledge that you will not get by reading it or you have to watch them work and learn how to do it in Canada was one of my places to go. And well, let's hope that that's coronaviruses, that we get rid of it and and we start flying and learning from each other again. So, yeah. Well, I hope it's Canada that you choose to come to. So thank you so much for chatting with me today. It's been absolutely wonderful. I really appreciate it.

37:27 | Thank you so much. And to our listeners and our viewers, thank you for joining salary and me today and to hear about incredible people in the world that are doing such good things and working so hard for the rest of us. And I think that Salumi is such a prime example of that. So to our listeners and viewers. So thank you for joining us today. And please follow us on LinkedIn and follow us on YouTube and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

38:01 | Thanks. And until we meet again.