Ji Soo Park, a final year medical student and HIN intern reflects on how working at the HIN has helped her understand how digital innovation can impact the health and care system.
I’m Ji Soo, a final year medical student at King’s College London and an incoming resident doctor at King’s College Hospital.
During my intercalated year I completed a Master’s degree in Paediatrics and Child Health at University College London, which gave me my first real exposure to the healthcare space where clinical and non-clinical skills meet. My dissertation was in public health, which gave me an interest in how public health policy works in practice within the NHS. I was also curious about digital innovation, which is a popular topic in medical school, but rarely fully understood.
A different but equally valuable perspective
When I started at the HIN, I knew little about healthcare innovation beyond a general interest in how improvement happens outside the clinical environment. As a medical student, much of my experience has naturally centred on the patient-doctor relationship: listening to patients, understanding their concerns, and thinking through diagnosis and management. I wanted to develop skills and knowledge which I would not be able to in a clinical setting and took this opportunity to explore medicine with a broader lens. These past six weeks have shown me a different but equally valuable perspective: that patient care is influenced not only by what happens in a consultation room, but also by how services are designed, how technology is used, how decisions are made and how organisations work together to deliver change.
What struck me was the diversity of the people I have worked with. From previous clinicians to NHS England staff and project managers, all these people from many diverse backgrounds were united by one purpose: to improve the NHS. It reminded me of the multidisciplinary teams I have worked with in clinical settings, reflecting a familiar collaborative spirit.
What I worked on
Working across the Digital Transformation and Technology Team and the Long-Term Conditions Team gave me an amazingly varied experience. I conducted horizon scans for gestational diabetes devices and diagnostic AI in neighbourhood health, contributed clinical context to a telerehabilitation project, and designed and analysed patient surveys for the Healthy Hearts programme. I also produced a marketing poster for the FibriCheck project, gathered qualitative feedback from clinicians and built a cost model for the Type 1 Diabetes Hybrid Closed Loop (T1D HCL) rollout to inform future business cases for the South East London Integrated Care Board (SEL ICB).
Each project has taught me something different:
- Horizon scanning showed me how new ideas are assessed and aligned with service priorities before entering routine care
- Contributing to a business case exposed me to health economics, an area I was previously unfamiliar with. It displayed the financial realities behind service development and how advocating for patients involves understanding resource allocation as much as clinical decision making
- Attending the national T1D HCL meetings, which the HIN is leading on, exemplified the complexities involved in securing a local rollout and developing a reproducible framework for the rest of the country
- Designing communication materials honed my ability to make complex information clear and accessible in settings beyond the consultation room
One of my supervisors shared an insight that stayed with me: the HIN prioritises delivering fast, relevant, and impactful outcomes, in contrast to the longer-form academic research I am accustomed to.
In clinical settings, practice is typically structured around timed appointments, waiting lists and standardised frameworks. However, this is not the case at the HIN. As a leading organisation for innovation, teams at the HIN prioritise asking the right questions to create an equitable pathway rather than seeking perfect answers from an established guideline. Given the breadth of the teams’ projects, adopting this mindset has been essential, and it has been rewarding to gain insight into how different teams approach their work.
What I am taking forward
My time at the HIN has shown me how intricately connected the HIN’s work is to frontline care, even when operating at a system level. This internship has opened my eyes to the vast world of healthcare innovation and strengthened my interest in health tech and public policy. I am more cognisant of innovation projects from the news to everyday conversations, and it is fascinating how many people are driven by the desire to improve the environment they work in.
I am deeply grateful to everyone at the HIN for their support and for helping me understand how innovation can support the onward trajectory of the NHS, especially in a period of real transition. This is not the typical medical student elective but that is exactly what has made this experience so valuable. The placement has given me knowledge, context, teamwork skills, and professional experience that I know will serve me well when I begin my foundation programme later this year. I would wholeheartedly encourage other medical students to broaden their experiences and consider similar opportunities. I look forward to following what the HIN does next, and I am excited to shape my career based on my clinical, policy-driven and innovation interests.
Find out more
Learn about the National Hybrid Closed Loop Adoption and Type 1 Diabetes Outpatient Transformation Programme.