A Summer Internship at Nuna 2020
Window into the learnings and highlights from our interns
Alex
Hi there, I’m Alexander! I’m an engineering intern at Nuna through the Kleiner Perkins Fellowship, and I’d love to share a bit about myself and what I’ve learned. First off, I’m entering my final year at Penn in the Wharton School of Business where I’ve been concentrating in statistics. This is my first software engineering internship, and I’ve been able to learn a ton about both the healthcare vertical and becoming a better engineer. When I first came to Nuna, I had little knowledge of the inefficiencies and outright ineffective design of the current healthcare system, but became both aware and concerned after processing The Price We Pay in conjunction with Nuna’s onboarding materials, both of which provided context around the incredibly important work Nuna does, and in turn some of the projects I’ve been able to tackle. During my internship, I’ve worked on two big projects, the first being a data engineering project regarding measuring provider quality known as HEDIS, and the second being an ETL project which process data from AWS S3 and ingests it into our DBMS, Clickhouse.
As this has been my first pure software engineering internship, I’ve experienced an absolute massive amount of growth in understanding workflows, learning about technical skills such as AWS s3 / integration testing / mocking, and writing cleaner code. Furthermore, despite my internship being completely remote and in a completely different timezone, I collaborated deeply with my fellow interns over a multitude of Zoom calls, and not only developed a better understanding of collaborative engineering, but made some incredible friends in the process among the design and engineering interns. And thanks to Nuna’s incredibly open culture I’ve been able to peer into the work done by multiple teammates in Engineering, Infra, Sales, and Strategy to develop a more robust awareness of how a startup can operate. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity Nuna has provided me in being able to not only better myself as a software engineer, but do so while operating alongside some of the most brilliant, talented people I’ve ever met as we tackle a problem of critical importance, saving lives.
Chloe
👋 Hi! I’m Chloe. I’m currently a UX Design & Research intern at Nuna this summer through the Kleiner Perkins Fellowship program. I’m finishing up my master’s in engineering at Stanford this year, where I also studied product design as an undergrad. I’ve worked at a smaller precision health startup in the past, but was excited to tackle the tough problems with our ailing healthcare system at scale with the amazing team here. This summer, I’ve been working with Sonal to create an Operations Dashboard for Nuna’s Meaningful Matches product. This product optimizes the pairing of doctors and patients to give patients the best chance at receiving quality care suitable for their personal needs.
One of the coolest parts about our project is that we’ve been able to own the end-to-end design of our project from user research to engineering handoff, and be able to see it built before the summer ends! The biggest challenge definitely was the transition to remote work and trying to stay connected with everyone out of the office. The first week was the hardest, but we made it work! I was able to learn a lot about remote collaboration tools, and ultimately, became more proactive around asking for feedback and help when needed. One of my favorite memories from the summer was having a socially-distanced hangout with the design team in Golden Gate Park and watching the bison there together 🐃. I’ve learned a ton from the design team and leadership for my personal development — grateful for my time this summer at Nuna!
Sonal
Hi, I’m Sonal! I’m another Product Design Intern at Nuna this summer and also a Kleiner Perkins Design Fellow. I’m currently studying Economics and Design Innovation at UC Berkeley. I’m specifically interested in designing for social impact and applying product sense towards heavily constrained problems. In our current Covid-19-centered world, it’s been especially compelling to dive head first into the world of bringing high-quality, low-cost healthcare to people, on a large scale. I feel that Nuna has been the perfect fit for me this summer, as I’ve been able to utilize my design skill set to solve complex problems, while contributing towards the larger mission of furthering mass adoption and implementation of value-based care. I additionally feel really lucky to be working with such intelligent, passionate people.
A cool moment in my internship, thus far, has been seeing our Operations Dashboard come to fruition. I’ve been working alongside Chloe to design a dashboard to help track the ROI of Nuna’s Meaningful Matches Product; Meaningful Matches pairs patients with doctors who are best suited to care for that patient’s needs. When Chloe and I were presented with the project at the start of our internship, we had a multitude of client-related questions, healthcare terms to learn, and design processes to converge on. Today, having designed a nearly complete dashboard, I can’t help but reflect on the progress we’ve made from the first couple weeks of the project. Since, Chloe and I were able to find a design flow that stood the test of remote working, talked and tested with various internal and external stakeholders for the dashboard, and went through many, many rounds of iterations. This experience, like my internship at Nuna, has exceeded my expectations and also taught me that this is only the beginning in terms of learning and work left to be done.
Moksh
Hey, I’m Moksh! I’m a software engineer intern at Nuna this summer through the KP Engineering Fellows program. I’m a rising senior at Penn studying Computer Science and Management. I’ve worked as an engineer at larger tech companies in the past but was attracted to Nuna because of its nimble team and aligned mission and values. Having become familiar with the many ways the American healthcare system fails patients, I am excited about the work Nuna has been doing to intertwine data and healthcare and close many inefficiencies. This summer, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects with my fellow engineering interns. Namely, I’ve been able to work on building out various healthcare quality metrics and scope out and contribute to a tool for drilling down into healthcare data.
Being on ground zero in the push for driving value-based care at Nuna has been an incredible experience. This project has introduced us to many of the challenges of measuring quality in healthcare, but has also shown us the importance of these metrics in promoting the delivery of services that are appropriate and affordable. Thinking about a remote internship was certainly a bit nerve-wracking but Nuna did a great job accommodating us and its remote-friendly culture helped us feel right at home. What I’ve enjoyed most from this summer is learning from the people. Nuna has a really special group of driven individuals who feel strongly about transitioning to value-based care. Being immersed in this community has taught me a lot and been inspirational. Without a doubt, I’ve seen first hand that every row of data is a life. I have a lot to take with me from this summer and I’m grateful to Nuna for this exceptional experience.
Sean
Hey y’all, I’m Sean, one of Nuna’s engineering interns this summer. I’m a Master’s student at Stanford studying computer science with a concentration in Human Computer Interaction, having changed things up from my undergrad where I studied electrical engineering. Although it took me four plus years in college to figure out what type of work I’m passionate in, I’ve always tried to be involved in the healthcare industry due to the service and support you can provide for others. So when given the chance to contribute to Nuna’s mission of value-based care, I was excited to jump right in! I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the engineering interns on health quality metrics for value-based care, as well as efforts to explore healthcare data. Spending the summer working at Nuna has been that much more insightful and meaningful given the challenges we’re all facing, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute to projects that’ll directly impact healthcare quality and care.
One of my biggest concerns coming into Nuna’s engineering internship was my lack of healthcare experience. There were countless acronyms and healthcare concepts that people mentioned from day one, and it didn’t help that I’ve been told by practically every person out there that healthcare policy and data are both incredibly complicated. But instead of letting that deter me, I shaped two goals aside from growing as an engineer- developing a healthcare-centric vocabulary and an intentional understanding of US healthcare systems. Tackling health quality measures was one way to accomplish this, but I’d definitely say I’ve learned the most from just talking to the team at Nuna and hearing about their work on projects that contribute to Nuna’s value-based care platform. Similar to how I have much more to learn about healthcare, there’s much more to be done to fix healthcare. I’m grateful for Nuna for the opportunity to stretch myself to learn about healthcare, and I’m excited to see the future of healthcare change through Nuna’s efforts.
Stephanie
Hi! I’m Stephanie, the last of Nuna’s interns this summer and also an Engineering Fellow in the KP Fellows Program. I graduated from MIT a few months ago with double degrees in Computer Science and Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and will be going back in the fall to complete a Masters of Engineering. Having spent the previous two summers working in New York, I was excited to experience this one in the heart of San Francisco’s tech scene, learning about software engineering and startup life while helping to tackle one of the most pressing challenges plaguing our country today: access to adequate, affordable, and high-quality healthcare. Although the “physically being in the office” part didn’t quite work out, this internship has nevertheless provided an incredible opportunity to deep dive into the US healthcare system and take part in the effort to fix its shortcomings. It has been especially poignant to work at Nuna in the midst of this ongoing pandemic and contribute to projects for promoting the large-scale adoption of value-based care.
Aside from the technical learnings, another aspect of the internship that I particularly valued was getting to know the people. With everything being remote, I was initially concerned about meeting other individuals at the company, but Nuna did an amazing job with helping us, interns, feel welcome. A unique feature of the program was collaborating with the other engineering interns on a single project around measuring quality in healthcare, which not only provided a means of “forced socialization” (I swear, it was a fun time!) but also helped me, personally, improve my skills in communication and public speaking. Everyone here has been overwhelmingly supportive in helping me grow — whether technically, personally, or professionally — and I’ve enjoyed speaking to people both inside and outside of engineering. They’ve helped me get a sense of the energy and passion that motivates them to work on a problem that is so vast, complex, and historically inflexible to change, which has inspired me to not only be a better engineer, but to continue finding ways to use those skills in a way that is meaningful and impact-driven. I echo the other interns when I say that I’m tremendously grateful to have had this internship experience, and that I look forward to seeing the role that Nuna plays in the future of healthcare.
