ABOUT ME
Andrija S. Grustam was born on December 30, 1976 in Belgrade. He attended the Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium while at the same time spending time doing scientific research at the Petnica Research Center near Valjevo. In cooperation with the Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković" from Belgrade, in 1994, he published a paper on the evolution of the karyotype of the Rhinolophus Euryale in Petničke sveske.
He served the army from 2004-2005 at the 512th Medical Training Center "Dr. Archibald Reiss" in Novi Sad.
He graduated from the Medical Faculty of the University of Belgrade in 2006 with an average grade of 9.26. He was a scholarship holder of the Serbian government, winner of both the Republic Scholarship and the Scholarship for Young Talents. During his studies, he was engaged in scientific research and organized scientific gatherings. He founded the first international student congress of medical sciences in Serbia (SICOMS: Students' International Congress of Medical Sciences), where he was first PR manager and then secretary-general. He established international cooperation between student organizations of the Medical Faculty in Belgrade and the Lviv National Medical University named after Danylo Halytsky in Ukraine. He was on a professional exchange in Brazil where he specialized in cardiac surgery as a student assistant at Hospital de Messejana Dr. Carlos Alberto Studart Gomes, Fortaleza. He completed a medical internship at the Clinical Center of Serbia from 2006-2007.
In 2007, he founded the Foundation for International Communication in Belgrade, a non-profit organization aiming to improve health and education in Serbia. In cooperation with the Government of Serbia / Ministry of Diaspora, the Assembly of the City of Belgrade, the Tourist Organization of Belgrade, he created the Belgrade Summer School, a multi-week program for international students and the Serbian diaspora. The Belgrade Summer School has been recognized as a project of exceptional importance for the global positioning of the Republic of Serbia and included in the five-year development plan of the city of Belgrade. In addition, he established cooperation with the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Belgorod State National Research University in Russia.
In 2007, he received a scholarship from the Dutch government (MTEC: Matra Training for European Cooperation) for a master's degree in public health at the University of Maastricht. He spent an intensive week at the Netherlands School of Public and Occupational Health in Amsterdam. He did his internship at empirica Gesellschaft für Kommunikations und Technologieforschung, a private research institution in Bonn, Germany, where he worked on the European Commission's largest project from the Seventh Framework Program (FP7), which concerned the management of heart disease via technology. He defended his master's thesis on the topic: "Telemonitoring, adherence to treatment and behavior change in patients with coronary heart disease and heart failure."
In 2008, he won three Erasmus Mundus scholarships from the European Commission (out of three permitted applications): 1) Sustainable Regional Health Systems, coordinated by Vilnius University of Lithuania, 2) Master of Bioethics, coordinated by Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and 3) Dynamics of Health and Welfare coordinated by EHESS from France. He chose the latter and spent two years ("Master2", equivalent to a master's degree) at the grande école in Paris - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - the highest French research and educational institution in the social sciences. He spent an intensive week at a partner institution, the National School of Public Health of the University of Lisbon and the University of Evora, Portugal, while an internship at the ComSanté Institute, a center for research in health communications at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. He defended his master's thesis in 2009 on "Socio-economic inequalities in health in the Republic of Serbia" at the French National Center for Scientific Research, the most prominent French state research organization, and at the same time the largest scientific agency in Europe.
In 2009, he attended a master's degree in health management at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. He spent an intensive week at Medical and Health Sciences Department, Linköping University in Sweden, and did an internship at the Kwazulu-Natal School of Development Studies in South Africa. He received the title of "Master Universitario en Salud y Bienestar Comunitario" in 2010 from the Rector of the University, on behalf of King Juan Carlos I, with all the rights that this title carries.
From 2010 to 2017, he worked at the Dutch company Philips on chronic disease management systems. He has participated in various multidisciplinary projects involving academia, clinical and industrial partners. He was part of the Healthcare Information Management Department and the Population Health Department in the company's research department in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He worked on the portal for patients who leave the hospital and go for home treatment; identifying the 5% of the population that generates the most health expenditures in the United States; creating business models for telemonitoring national populations. He also worked for the research department in Cambridge, Great Britain (Care Management Solutions, Philips Research UK), on the mobile platform for chronic care management. While working at the Innovation Department in Boston, USA (Home Monitoring, Philips USA), he initiated the implementation of a cardiovascular telemonitoring device at Mass General Brigham, the largest integrated healthcare system in North America. In 2012, he led the Philips Healthcare team on the ten-day Massachusetts Institute of Technology event (Health and Wellness Innovation, MIT Media Lab), creating an interactive mobile health platform for patients with chronic diseases. In 2013, he won the MIT Hacking Medicine, an annual hackathon organized by MIT, Samsung, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. During his engagement at Philips, he regularly gave presentations and lectures at international scientific conferences, e.g. at Harvard in 2014, Stanford in 2014, and the National University of Singapore in 2017.
He studied at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, at the Summer School of Health Economics in 2012 (ESP25), and the Winter School of Decision-Making in Medicine in 2013 (EWP02). He participated in the 2013 summer school at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, where he studied applied multivariate analysis (S4). The following year, he was admitted to Harvard School of Public Health, where he studied quantitative methods for decision-making in medicine and public health, using software (RDS288), which he completed with the highest grade: A / 4.00. He was elected to attend the master class of the dean of Stanford University School of Medicine in 2014 on the topic of leadership in academic medicine. At the London School of Economics and Political Science, he completed the Summer School of Digital Business (MG250) in 2015 with the highest grade: A. At the University of York, the world center for health economics Economics, York University), in 2013, he attended a course in analytical modeling of decisions for economic evaluation in health care, and in 2017 for the evaluation of health technologies. Finally, he was admitted to the University of Oxford in 2017, where he determined the material on the design of scientific studies and the scientific method (O19C177B9Y) at the Department of Continuing Education.
He has attended online courses at Stanford University in writing and publishing in science (HRP 213) and Statistics in medicine (HRP 258), the University of California, Berkeley in Descriptive statistics (Stat 2.1x) and Probability (Stat 2.2x), and Harvard University from Innovation in Health (BUS5.1x), Clinical Trials (HSPH-HMS214x), Health and Society (PH201x).
Andrija was awarded a Ph.D. by the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management in 2018 for his research on "Cost-effectiveness, Care Coordination, and Business Model Innovation in Telehealth for Chronic Heart Failure Patients"; second supervision was by Saw Swee Hock School Of Public Health, National University of Singapore.
Subsequently, Andrija was awarded dr. sci. med (Ph.D.) by the School of Public Health, the University of Belgrade for his research on "Factors associated with utilization of primary and specialist healthcare services by elderly cardiovascular patients in the Republic of Serbia"; second supervisor was by Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen.
Since 2017, he has been working in Switzerland, first as the medical director of the Medical Devices and Services division of the oldest pharmaceutical company in the world - Merck KGaA from Germany, and then as a program leader for the global prevention of cardiovascular disease at Novartis. In addition, he is the founder of the Contract Research Organization for Medical Devices & Services in London, UK.
Andrija is a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Serbian Medical Society. He is a member of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the American Telemedicine Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He speaks English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Dutch. So far, he has published seven scientific papers, of which six in indexed journals.
