With a keen interest in information technology (IT), coupled with a strong influence from both her parents who serve as doctors, it is unsurprising that Ayana found herself in the HealthTech industry – and enjoying what she does.
“My passion has always been in tech, and it’s also been a dream of mine to follow in my parents’ footsteps to serve in public healthcare”, reflected the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) graduate.
While she was in her second year at Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), the Computer Science major student chanced upon IHiS’ booth at SIT’s annual career fair. As Ayana spoke to her seniors-turned-IHiS-employees, her interest in HealthTech was further piqued as they shared about their roles, and the exciting changes that are taking place in the fast-growing industry.
Growing within IHiS
Ayana started her career with IHiS as a business analyst. She was responsible for Keeping the Lights on (KTLO) where she managed day-to-day support of applications such as incident management and problem resolution. She was also in charge of project management which involves gathering user requirements to enhance those applications and arranging for implementation.
The Specialty Systems department supports applications that are highly specialised, with applications that range from vaccinations to pre/post-surgery evaluations that help healthcare staff in National Healthcare Group and National University Health System.
She subsequently became a Data Engineer as she moved to work on the SingHealth-IHiS Electronic Health Intelligence System (eHints), which serves the analysis and reporting needs of business, finance and clinical users. Her focus has shifted to backend support for the data warehouse.
The data warehouse deals with ETL – extracting, transforming and loading of data. She explains with with an analogy, “The various data sources are like fresh crops. The crops need to be harvested (extracting). The crops picked have to be ripe and ensured there are not rotten (transforming). Then each supermarket requires only specific crops so we deliver according to their needs (loading). Therefore, only the required data reaches the end users, which helps in reporting and forecasting.”
On her new role, she added “This is a completely different experience as I could only see hints of the backend support in my previous role, but now I can see it from my own screen. This provides me with a more hands-on experience.”
While work may be challenging, Ayana derives a deep sense of commitment and joy from work as she remains motivated to deliver the best with her team.
“I’ve witnessed, across all the clusters, their dedication to better healthcare, and how much the smooth operations of the applications that I’m in charge of, help in their day-to-day responsibilities. It makes me want to do more for them,” expressed Ayana.
She recalls the times she was made to synthesise technical information to digestible knowledge to the vendors as her most challenging moments at IHiS. She attributes the useful tips she learnt and applied to the Graduate Development Programme (now known as the HealthTech Associate Programme).
Ayana’s Graduate Development Programme (GDP) experience
“The GDP experience was an extremely useful six months of my time. It was a gateway for fresh graduates to learn important soft skills that include drafting emails, appropriate work attire and how we communicate effectively. Plus, it was a fun time of learning, and did not feel like work at all!” Ayana laughed.
During her GDP journey, Ayana met like-minded individuals who shared similar interests and their passion to serve in HealthTech. Ayana’s fondest memory is the Team Bonding Day at Sentosa, which was one of the activities in the GDP’s foundation training.
“My favourite activity was the tight rope activity. Our whole team had to hold hands and walk through a maze on a tight rope without falling off. We had to rely on the person in front of us for balance. If one fell, everyone would have to start all over again. Of course, we ended up falling off the rope, but we laughed so hard and had so much fun that day! This activity taught us the importance of teamwork and trust in our work colleagues.” said Ayana.
