Author

During the summer of 2020, I had the opportunity to work as a software engineering intern at One Medical. As a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, I’ve spent much of my time in college studying computer science, math, and cognitive science — and as an emergency medical technician (EMT), I’ve come to care deeply about healthcare and the future of the industry. As I considered my options for the summer, the chance to work as an engineer at One Medical was an exciting learning opportunity at the intersection of my two passions — healthcare and technology. Over the months that followed, I was able to build on my technical skills and work directly with medical providers while contributing to a mission that resonated with me personally. Now that my internship has wrapped up, I’m eager to share some of the lessons I took with me, as well as some insider info to help future interns ease into their roles. Whether you’re an incoming One Medical intern (in which case, congratulations and welcome!) or simply considering applying — I hope my experience can offer you a taste of what the engineering internship is really like.

Navigating the Onboarding Experience

The internship onboarding experience was incredibly exciting and a bit overwhelming. From multiple one-on-one meetings with teammates across a range of focus areas to quickly getting up to speed on new technical tools (Docker containers, Node Package Managers, AWS, Pivotal Tracker, MixPanel, etc.), my calendar was full and my daily learning rate grew exponentially. After taking some time to set up my workspace, I focused on adjusting to the agile workflow, balancing coding with meetings, and getting accustomed to the One Medical lingo.

One of the greatest challenges I faced during the onboarding period was the transition in culture from coding for university projects to coding in industry. At school, I wholeheartedly participated in the work-style stereotype of computer science majors known as getting “in the zone.” When I was in the zone, the entire world outside of my computer melted away and I could program for several hours straight until late into the night (or perhaps early into the morning). I quickly learned that in industry, this nonstop work strategy doesn’t fly! Even though the Engineering department at One Medical implements “No Meeting Tuesdays,” it became clear to me that I would need to be productive and efficient in smaller chunks of time. A teammate told me early on, “Even if you only have 15 minutes between meetings, you can still get quite a lot done — don’t underestimate how valuable this time is!”

I also quickly came to realize that documentation is every intern’s best friend. I kept a notebook with me all summer, and every time I had a question about anything or learned something new, I wrote it down. By the end of my internship, I was grateful I’d invested the time to document so many new ideas, concepts, and queries to consider and take with me as I grow in my career.

Playing a Part in the Big Picture

For the most part, I spent my internship working in fullstack development and was able to ship a number of features. My primary project was to add prescription history to our electronic medical records so that our providers could more easily access that information for their patients. The feature was a modal in the medications section of the chart that displayed a patient’s complete prescription history. To accomplish this, I worked mainly in Angular but also developed a deeper understanding of our database and the relationship between the backend and frontend. This project even shipped to production, which was incredibly gratifying as an intern.

The second project I worked on was a tool that streamlines the process in which providers are able to refill prescriptions for patients more efficiently and, when appropriate, upon request of the patient.

While building these features, I had the chance to work directly with some of One Medical’s physicians and shadow them while they cared for patients. This was a particularly rewarding part of my internship experience because it gave me the unique advantage of seeing how my day-to-day work directly impacted the end user — an opportunity that’s not always afforded to engineers. Rather than approaching my projects as abstract concepts, I was able to see firsthand the impact my work was having on my teammates in other departments and their ability to deliver care. This helped me stay connected to the big picture and provide more context behind the work I was doing; I was able to directly observe the pain points that would be helped by my work, and then get feedback from physicians on the feature I was building.

From an engineering perspective, it’s rare to receive direct, real-time feedback from end users (in this case, the physicians). From a healthcare perspective, because the tool I built helps streamline the charting process, I was able to optimize the physician experience. And from an internship perspective, I worked on a feature that will be shipped to production, thereby making a tangible impact in the codebase and product.

Beyond Engineering

Outside of my projects, I engaged in plenty of extracurricular activities, ranging from intern events and social team gatherings to coding at our hackathon. Throughout the summer, departments worked together to organize a series of helpful and fun learning labs for the cohort of summer interns which were designed to prepare us for success as we progress in our careers. These workshops covered topics from resume building and interview skills to communication and public speaking, and many of the company leaders offered words of wisdom. This was especially meaningful because it really underscored the value One Medical places on interns and the work they do. To see that even the company’s top executives were invested in creating a positive internship experience really motivated me to do the best work possible. I also attended networking events where I met coworkers from very different fields, and took part in educational workshops on topics like business negotiation and mindfulness. We also have regular Code Forums where engineers share their knowledge (not necessarily related to work), and I had the honor of presenting on the basics of computational theory at my final Code Forum. These events keep engineers engaged and excited to continue their education through peer learning.

One of the biggest highlights of these events and opportunities was the engineering hackathon. Once a quarter, the technology team at One Medical participates in a themed hackathon, where engineers are encouraged to branch out from their team’s regular responsibilities and tackle a passion project unrelated to their day-to-day work. This summer’s theme was “Hack to the Future” and the event stands out as one of the most memorable experiences of my internship. I teamed up with another intern to create something called the “ML Text Scrubber,” which uses natural language processing services to detect protected health information (PHI) in texts and replace it with synthetic data. This project would streamline integration tests and allow developers to build machine learning models in the future using realistic PHI-scrubbed text data, and the machine learning team actually plans to take over the project and develop it further!

Tried and True Tips for Incoming Engineering Interns

Inspired by many of the people I have spoken with in my one-on-one meetings, here are some of my biggest takeaways for how to complete a successful engineering internship at One Medical:

Be a self-starter.

Rather than always waiting for your supervisor to assign you specific tasks, seek out opportunities that interest you and go for them.

Always ask questions.

There will never be a point where you run out of questions. As long as you have them, ask them!

Pair whenever possible.

Pairing is a great way to learn from more experienced engineers. Reach out to team members and see if they’d be willing to pair with you on some small projects. Chances are — they will!

Keep learning.

One of the most rewarding aspects of our field is that the learning never stops! Create learning goals for yourself and set aside some time to achieve them. These goals can range from developing technical or business skills to learning more about how a piece of the codebase operates. The opportunities are endless.

Leah Voytovich is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying Computer Science, Math, and Cognitive Science. She works as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and is excited to work at the intersection of her two passions — engineering and healthcare! She is also passionate about computational theory, astrophysics, traveling, cooking, languages, and her pet baby turtle Dominique.

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