My Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) Black Internship Programme experience: Jedidiah Awuku
17 August 2021 | Author: Jedidiah Awuku, Intern at Wolverhampton NHS Trust
Jedidiah Awuku reflects on his experience as an intern within our Black Internship Programme at the Royal Wolverhampton Trust (NHS).
This first-ever internship experience has been truly wonderful. From the start, my goals were mainly to be exposed to an aspect of computer applications (Data Science) within the health sector;
- How it is performed
- How things are structured in a research office setting,
- Meet and learn from information technology and other professionals
- Gain a sense of professionalism and a clearer view of what pertains in the professional world
And thereby contribute to informing my decision regarding which area of information technology to specialise in.
Through this internship, I have learnt about how vast arrays of data is captured from various systems and databases, how they are stored in structuralised formats, extracted using powerful languages mainly SQL (Structured Query Language) and collated as reports using excel pivot tables, Power BI and other useful platforms for meaningful analysis.
By taking part in the set technical challenge, I have learnt how researchers pick up huge health-related data sets, clean, process, explore and cleverly analyse them using languages such as Python and R to make interesting discoveries that are in the best interests of the health of society and the world at large.
I am extremely pleased to say that all the above targets sought to acquire from this experience have been successfully achieved beyond my expectations. I am therefore entirely grateful to Health Data Research UK, Sarbjit from Royal Wolverhampton Trust, as well as all members of the information team for making this work out the way it has.
Although my interest in health data science has developed through this internship, the way forward now, climbing the educational ladder, is to expose myself to many more aspects of computer applications thereby building my versatility. Once again, a great big thank you.