Jeroen Mulder is the author of Transforming Healthcare with DevOps, we got the chance to sit down and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Jeroen: Cloud, DevSecOps, DevOps, Security
Q: How did you become an author for Packt?
Jeroen: I wrote my first book for Packt in 2020, about multi-cloud architecture. In 2021 my second book about DevOps for enterprise architects was published. In both cases I just submitted the ideas for the books to Packt to find out if they would see an opportunity to have these books in their portfolio. My motivation to write books is because I truly believe that all professionals get better if we share knowledge.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Jeroen: This book – Transformation into Sustainable Healthcare – has been in the making for over two years, from the first idea to the actual release. Both do-author Henry Mulder and myself have a long-term interest in healthcare and spend many years in advising and working with healthcare institutions, especially in the field of healthcare-tech. The issues that healthcare faces as an industry are global. Technology can add to provide solutions to these problems, but technology is never the sole solution. It’s a full transformation. We started researching transformation models and next have been talking to professionals intensively before and during the writing of this book.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Jeroen: Writing always comes with challenges. You need a very clear scope of what you want to tell in the book. You need people who review your work and help you to keep the focus on that scope.
Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Jeroen: This book is not so much about the technology itself. It’s really about transforming healthcare and how technology can help with that. Technology can help in preventing illness, it can help in treatment, recovery, etc. But the real goal of technology is enabling patients to participate in society again. For that, you need integrated care, where doctors not only focus on their specialism, but on how they can improve the life of the patient in every aspect. It requires collaboration between all stakeholders in the care path, including the patient itself. That’s what this book is about.
Q. Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Jeroen: We can list a 1.000 books describing the problems, challenges and issues in healthcare, but this book seeks to provide a methodology to actually change and improve healthcare. It looks at methodologies such as DevOps to iterate steps to better, patient-centric healthcare. But we also look at how we can organize this in an optimized way, for instance through micro-enterprises with autonomous working care teams. The book also provides real examples of organizations who went through the transformation.
Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Jeroen: The book provides a model – TiSH or Transformation into sustainable healthcare – that guide organizations in the transformation, tread by tread on a staircase. The top of the staircase is the ultimate goal for patients, which is participation.
Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Jeroen: Again, this book is not about the technology itself. It’s about how technology can help in improving healthcare.
Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?
Jeroen: My website can be found on Jeroenmulder.net
Q. How would you describe your author’s journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Jeroen: Absolutely. The editing team guides the writer in every single step, from shaping the first idea, the production and the actual release.
Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Jeroen: I work for Fujitsu where we contribute to a variety of tech communities. I’m personally connected to the Technology Leaders Club of Rela8, but also have regular talks on tech conferences.
Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Jeroen: Specifically for healthcare I recommend the sites, blogs and publications of HIMMS and the technology journals of The Lancet.
Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Jeroen: We started with an outline containing all major topics, next wrote the book chapter by chapter – continuously updating the outline when we felt that the message that we are trying to bring across, wasn’t clear enough. It was a continuous iteration of chapters and outline.
Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Jeroen: Start. Don’t be discouraged by the amount of work. It’s a lot of work, but the end result will make up for all the work!
You can Jeroen’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
