IQVIA

Yifei Chen,Trinity College, Third Year Undergraduate,MChem Chemistry, Remote Working

Work Projects

Thought leadership is the intersection between business development and strategy. The team is essentially a commercial think tank for IQVIA, which develops the company’s strategic thinking for macro trends at a longer time horizon. The internship allows choice for interns to explore any interesting areas that the larger team does not have time for. You can usually undertake multiple projects throughout your internship, and you will be assigned one project mentor per project. The other experienced members of the team are also there to help.

You are also encouraged to reach out to other IQVIAns abroad or in other specialisations (particularly as Thought Leadership has such an interdisciplinary role in the firm). This year almost all the projects were relevant to COVID in some way; I was tasked with building databases, creating slide decks with data analysis, writing articles, and contributing to white papers in projects spanning from genomics, to primary care to the pharma supply chain. These are usually viewpoints developed to be presented for top 20 pharma clients, but one project that we worked on this summer actually was sold to a client directly as well.

Daily Life

The internship consisted of around a week or so of training and introductions to familiarize one with the team, IQVIA proprietary data and with technical skills. A day usually starts around 9am, but because of remote working, offers more flexibility. There is an hour for a lunch break and work generally ends around 5pm. Unlike consulting roles, the internship is more internally facing, so there is usually no overtime.

You are usually tasked with multiple projects at the same time (this is totally manageable and trains project management skills) so a day will usually have a couple of catch up calls with respective supervisors in each area. Then throughout the day, you work on data analysis, research or sometimes primary data collection (with experts or otherwise). The work is not that different from consulting work. Interspersed there is usually a few calls a

week (around 30mins to an hour per call) of networking sessions within the company (a bit more formalized due to remote working) where you can get some touch points with other departments at IQVIA. Then to wrap up the week there are also often unwinding sessions to socialize with the team on Friday evening.

Working under the pandemic has been quite challenging, but also offers one a lot of flexibility. I was able to do some staycations in the UK and see a lot of cool scenery on weekends and avoid London rent. I was able to see the seaside and hike as well.

Lasting Impressions

I was first really pleased to see so many hard-working and smart people working and by the end I also felt like I was a part of this incredible team. Despite the pandemic, the team did everything possible to make us feel welcomed and I personally learned a lot about healthcare and the pharma industry.

I would like to continue working in the healthcare sector in the future and would like to do consulting-style work, but the internship has also made me reaffirm my desire to contribute to global health in the long term. Having seen problems within the industry’s focus, I think I want to contribute to addressing some of the unmet needs, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries.

I really enjoyed my internship overall and would recommend it to anyone who is curious about the developments in life sciences. Some of the projects I’ve worked on are almost completely original research and methodologies, and I had a lot of autonomy in what I wanted to investigate. IQVIA has unparalleled expertise in access to information and is fast growing; most importantly the team is small, and you can receive a lot of mentorship from many who have worked in the industry for 20+ years. In terms of COVID thought leadership, the company has also been recognized for putting our high impact pieces for top pharma, and even interns’ analysis is readily used by the team.

What advice would you give to future interns?

Seek out opportunities to build your network and IQVIA is a really good place to do that and learn about healthcare. Take advantage of your time in this large organisation and try to talk to as many people in the organisation who interest you as possible.