Industry Background

My first job out of school was at IBM, where I landed in data science consulting. This was before the term “AI” had entered our day-to-day vocabulary.

At IBM, I had several projects involving healthcare AI implementations. Some of these were using NLP for large healthcare conglomerates, whereas others involved creating models for healthcare labor forces. In the process, I realized that the opportunities to apply AI in healthcare were immense.

However, there was still so much to the field that I wanted to discover. That’s how I ended up enrolling in a Master’s of Data Science course at the London School of Economics.

Without a doubt, the program gave me a crash course in all things AI-related, but my biggest learnings came from the Capstone Project. This involved partnering with an industry group to apply AI research in a real-world setting. We used a novel technique to improve the recommendation of treatments in a mental health app, and ended up boosting the treatment acceptance rate by 100%.

There was still so much I wanted to discover.

This hands-on experience taught me about important healthcare design considerations, such as privacy and the need for accuracy. These would be learnings I would apply time and time again.

My master’s occurred during COVID, which wasn’t the best time to be experiencing life in a new city and a new country. However, it did afford me a unique window into comparing and contrasting the approaches of the US and the UK in dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic.

I also was afforded invaluable insight into the strengths and weaknesses of a completely different healthcare system. One thing I have always remembered is the price of a specific medicine I required. Purchasing this medicine privately in the UK cost 1/10 the price of what it would cost in the US.