BS in Health Data Science Student
Major(s): Health Data Science, Applied Math
Minor: Computer Science
Daniel Hauersperger, a health data science student at the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, had the opportunity to complete an Xtern internship, the ultimate tech internship experience. Through Xtern, students work alongside industry leaders at Indianapolis’ fastest-growing tech companies, live and make friends with more than 100 other Xterns from around the country, and experience why the city is such an awesome place to live.
Daniel was an analyst intern for OurHealth, an independent healthcare provider that offers the nation’s largest network of near-site clinics. His desire was to learn and apply his health data science knowledge and also gain experience.
“As a member of the data team, I got to dive into the data and analytics at OurHealth,” Daniel said. “The team leaders wanted to let me experience multiple areas of the business, so I spent time with several departments to identify and answer their data questions.”
Daniel was exposed to real analytics challenges with immediate applications, and believes his team did a great job of giving him the resources to answer them.
“The questions I sought to answer varied in difficulty and scope, with easy ones such as, "What did the biometrics look like for a given subset of our population last year?," and harder questions such as, "How many appointments do we predict to be missed?," he said.
What Daniel is learning in the health data science program helped him “countless times” in his internship and led to projects he believes he wouldn’t have otherwise tackled.
“Besides what I've learned about R [programming], which helped me standardize my answers to some of the data questions, my HDS education has given me knowledge of machine learning, which opened up a very interesting project,” Daniel said.
In addition to sharing what he knew, Daniel had a chance to learn from the team at OurHealth.
“My team committed to helping me learn,” he said. “A few specific things I learned about include PostgreSQL, Tableau, and how to make sure I'm answering the right business question.”
Daniel said this internship gave him a lot of insight into what he wants to do long-term, and strengthened his resolve to contribute to health and life sciences with data science and analytics.
“It was super fun to play a part in contributing to the analytics and data science capabilities of a fast-growing company.”