Elevate will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in October. An anniversary that we are proud of and will celebrate with fun promotions – 10% discount on all Epidemiology courses throughout October (Elevate10years) and a big anniversary party on October 12 in the LiK Utrecht.
Robert Gorter (51) has been CEO of Elevate for almost 3 years now. In recent years he has celebrated many milestones. Eva van Ingen (38) has been a Business Developer at Elevate for 7 years and knows all the ins and outs of Elevate. “Working at Elevate is never boring. There are always new opportunities and challenges.”
In this interview, Robert and Eva look back on the past 10 years and express their expectations for the future of Elevate.
Eva: Elevate started in 2013 as part of the UMC Utrecht Julius Center. At that time, there was a need for quality education in lower-middle-income countries and it soon became clear that only online education could meet that need. Founder Prof. Dr. Rick Grobbee recognized that the didactics of online teaching are very different from face-to-face teaching. A project team was set up under his leadership. Soon afterwards, it was decided – in consultation with UMC Utrecht and Utrecht University – to continue the initiative as a company. And with that the foundation was laid for Elevate.
Eva: I joined Elevate in 2016, when our team consisted of approximately 10 employees, mainly educationalists. The MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online program had been launched the year before, so almost all activities were still focused on its exploitation. We looked for collaborations with universities worldwide and were busy with the e-moderation of the epidemiology courses.
At the same time, the expertise of our team of educationalists began to gain a reputation in and around the Utrecht Science Park and beyond at other academic institutions and healthcare organizations. The business development team I was part of became busy with more and more requests for customized online learning solutions.
Eva: That was the accreditation and go-live of the MSc Epidemiology Postgraduate Online program in 2015. In the following years, we have well maintained and further developed the course offering. This year we are once again proud to complete an intensive innovation process. The course offering has been updated both in terms of content and didactic aspects, which is important because we want to continue to offer students and teachers an optimal user experience. The Elevate team and the lecturers at the Julius Center have worked extremely hard on this together.
Robert: Every day is different at Elevate. We provide tailor-made learning solutions to our customers and every customer situation requires a unique approach. This makes our work very varied. In addition, we are growing rapidly and more and more medical professionals and clinical researchers are finding our training offering.
Robert: What I am very proud of is that we have many customers who keep coming back to us to extend or expand the collaboration. Our customer satisfaction is generally very high and our customers are much more our partner than our client.
Robert: In the coming years we will further expand our Academy with high-quality training for Life Sciences and Health professionals. We will also further expand our customer base with healthcare organizations, medical professional associations and academic hospitals in Europe.
October is all about celebrating the 10th anniversary of Elevate. Do you want to join our event on 12 October in the LiK Utrecht? Please send an email to info@elevatehealth.eu and we will put you on the guest list.
