Blog

One of the key experiences during one's time as a graduate is working as an intern. Gaining work experience is the foundation to boosting employability, especially as a master’s student. After landing an internship as Data Science and Visualization Intern at Purview this past Summer, I couldn't wait to experience the professional world.

Today, as my internship comes to a close, I feel it was one of the best decisions I could have made to start my career off right. This internship has helped me to expand my perspectives, has enhanced my personal and professional skills, and has encouraged me to apply my academic knowledge, ideas, and theories to solve real-world problems that the healthcare industry is grappling with.

One of the most critical parts of this internship included learning how to handle health data. I was introduced to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information. Purview takes data privacy very seriously and sponsored me to receive HIPAA certification, encouraging me to put into practice what I was learning. 

This knowledge and training surrounding the careful treatment of personal data will impact all of my work in the future, regardless of whether I am working with health data. Protecting data privacy is an important public issue globally as apps and devices will continue to accumulate and track our personal data more and more each day. As an emerging data scientist, I feel that I share a major responsibility with my peers and colleagues to protect all people's privacy.

My capstone project during my time at Purview involved helping to establish and improve upon performance reporting for the health care organizations that Purview serves. Through various quantitative and qualitative metrics, we evaluated the quality of care, throughput, differences by division, patient access, and satisfaction amongst others.