IT Architecture Internship at Highmark Health Solutions
During my internship, I was an IT Architecture intern at Highmark Health Solutions, a subsidiary of Highmark Inc.. Highmark Inc. is a national, diversified healthcare provider and is among the largest health insurance companies in the United States. The Highmark Inc. headquarters are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but I was worked at the Camp Hill, Pennsylvania location.
HM Health Solutions provides innovative technology based solutions that support the multiple product lines of the health plan. The platform that is HM Health Solutions encompasses market development, operations, healthcare delivery management, and data repositories. My specific department within HM Health Solutions is IT Health Back Office Architecture. The IT Health Back Office Architecture department is responsible for supporting and managing the IT services infrastructure of the company, which consists of many different platforms and systems.
Throughout my internship, my projects include IT architectural mapping, working with a team to develop an information security scan tool as part of a larger effort to make business to business transactions more secure, doing statistical research using the MATLAB application, and analyzing libraries that are part of the company’s mainframe to make processes more efficient. For the IT architectural mapping project, I collected data and then used software to make diagrams that represent the company and the company’s various systems and processes. As part of my work on the business-to-business information security project, I tested and wrote reports for various applications developed for the project. For my MATLAB research, I used to statistical software to analyze data and write reports. For my work involving the mainframe, I conducted searches of various libraries and then identified and deleted specific programs to allow for greater efficiencies.
Throughout my internship, skills I learned in my classes have proved to be quite useful. For example, I run many SQL statements in many different software and programs. I also frequently use statistical concepts similar to those taught in MIS2502: Data Analytics when using MATLAB. Furthermore, swim lane diagrams are a concept popular in MIS courses that is quite similar to creating IT architectural maps. Lastly, knowledge about organizational structure, legal and compliance concepts, and basic knowledge about IT infrastructure has aided me greatly.
Some of the most important IT skills I have learned during my internship are exposure to many programming languages and software, project management methodology, and a better grasp of what IT architecture is. I have been exposed to many examples of Java, PHP, and COBOL programming during my internship, in addition to using technologies such as Splunk, SQL developer, and mainframe computing. Working on real world projects has giving me a great understanding of what it is like to be part of a large organization, and the different project management strategies needed to get work done. Furthermore, healthcare is a rapidly growing industry and it was valuable to learn more about this field. I am grateful to have worked in an IT architecture department because I found the working interesting and important.