Student Spotlight: Michele Marshall, Health Informatics Program

Michele Marshall is a Master of Science in Health Informatics (MSIN) student originally from Casco, Maine. With a strong interest in healthcare and science, Michele spent twenty years working as a medical technologist.

Michele currently balances working full-time as a microbiology software analyst for a medical technology company with family life and her studies.

Hear more from Michele in our webinar

Deciding to pursue Health Informatics

Michele’s passion for technology and science led her to earn her Bachelor of Science in Medical Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology. After she earned her undergraduate degree she worked as a medical technologist in various clinical laboratories for over twenty years. Working in labs, part of her job involved utilizing databases – which she enjoyed. After leaving the clinical lab, she pivoted to a role in Infection Control for a short time. In this job, she saw how critical properly managing data and information platforms was to hospitals.

After working for Infection Control, Michele drew on her experience working with databases as a medical technologist and became a trainer for a medical technology company on their microbiology instrumentation and database.

Most recently, Michele took on a new role within the same company. For the new position, she moved down to Pennsylvania. This move, in part, was spurred by taking the Database Design, Standards, Access, Modeling course. She explained “When I first started this program, I was working with my company’s proprietary database. After taking Professor Bedell’s database class, I was even more excited about working with the database and learning more! Now, I am working as a software analyst for my company on their new health informatics platform, and I think the interest and excitement generated by the class really prompted me to take this next step.”

In her various work roles over the years, Michele found that “data, information, and computers played a huge part of the hospital environment” and she felt that earning her Master of Science in Health Informatics was the next best step for her career.

On choosing UNE

When Michele set out to earn her Master of Science in Health Informatics, choosing the University of New England was a no-brainer. She explained, “I live in Maine and know that UNE is a wonderful, well-respected school. I couldn’t think of a better place to go!”

The fact that UNE’s Master of Science in Health Informatics program was completely online was also very important to her. She noted that “being able to balance my time and work around my needs is the thing I love the most about the program being online.” When Michele began the program, she was traveling often for work. In addition to work, she also has a family, so an online program that allowed the flexibility to work around her schedule was critical to her success.

Favorite part of the program

So far Michele has really enjoyed her classes and the opportunities to interact with her fellow students as well as the faculty members. She elaborated, “Each week we have discussion posts with the other students in the class and it is a great way to interact and learn from the others.”

Michele also reiterated that the Database Design, Standards, Access, Modeling course has been a highlight of her experience so far. She enjoyed exploring SQL (structured query language) in depth. Databases have always been a primary interest to Michele, but she felt this class “generated even more interest” in expanding her knowledge in this area.

Thinking about the future

Looking towards the future, what gets Michele excited is “the concept of using combined health data from multiple sources to look for important insights into disease.” She went on to explain, “I think this could have important ramifications for future diagnostic and treatment perspectives and I am excited to play a role in our future developments and products.”

Hear more from Michele in our recorded webinar on A Day in the Life of Health Informatics:

Watch the Webinar

If you are interested in pursuing a career in Health Informatics, or if you’re simply interested in discussing the program, please reach out to an Enrollment Counselor at (855) 751-4445 or via email at informatics@une.edu

Or, fill out an online application today at https://online.une.edu/gateway-portal-page> – we look forward to hearing from you!