StrongRoom AI is a tech medical company providing medication and administration solutions to enable medical practitioners to deliver fast, intelligent, and reinforced care. Their mission is to transform medication and care processes to prevent the avoidable social and commercial costs of drug mismanagement.
As a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Alejandro (Alex) Casar Berazaluce’s research focus area explored how to create personalised drug dosage plans that maximise progression-free survival for individual patients. He was interested in the APR. Intern program because it provides him with a precious opportunity to gain experience as both a professional and a researcher within the Australian data science ecosystem.
StrongRoom AI help pharmacists and pharmacy owners better engage with patients, enhance prescription adherence, and minimise adverse drug dosing effects. As an APR intern at Strongroom, Alex was a designer and statistics calculator who measured the impact of sending SMS messages to patients on their behaviour.
His PhD research focuses on studying cancer progression and identifying the conditions and tumour parameters that lead to different therapeutic outcomes. Alex’s major task was to develop mathematical models of cancer, focusing on the rates of cell birth, cell death, genetic mutation, and the acquisition and loss of resistance to therapy.
The internship at StrongRoom AI exposes Alex to two directions of fields combined with practical knowledge that he had only learned in textbooks before. It was Alex’s first experience truly using GitHub as a version control ecosystem, working directly with databases through platforms like MongoDB, and accessing databases with Postman. Alex says his most significant learning outcome at StrongRoom AI was gaining exposure to a large, distributed software project and understanding the technical intricacies involved.
“This experience has been an invaluable learning opportunity that will undoubtedly benefit my future career.
My biggest achievement has been successfully implementing a significant component of the messaging stats project with a high degree of independence. I was able to propose and implement design choices, learn required skills, and adhere to protocols and best practices by exploring the existing codebase and applying my findings to my tasks without needing constant guidance or approval.”
Throughout his internship at StrongRoom AI, Alex leveraged his advanced technical skills in machine learning and cloud technologies, learned during his PhD studies, to address intricate challenges aligned with the company’s objectives. His proactive attitude, coupled with a strong command of both technical and soft skills, allowed him to surpass expectations by delivering innovative solutions and seamlessly adapting to Agile methodologies.
– Angus Maiden, Data Scientist Technical Lead at StrongRoom AI
After completing his APR internship, Alex highly recommends that other PhD students partake in the program, as it offers an excellent chance for candidates to gain valuable industry experience outside of the academic ecosystem. Additionally, the intern program builds closer connections between academia and practices, enhancing professional skills and facilitating advancement of career prospects.
Based on patterns and statistics of medication adherence, StrongRoom AI empowers pharmacists to deeply understand causes and conditions of non-adherence, having more possibility to create positive intervention and leverage patient health outcomes both in Australia and globally. The research done by Alex and StrongRoom AI will tailor to patients based on their needs, reduce management and administration time of health providers and benefit the government by improving public health and reducing Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme expenditure.
Alejandro Casar Berazaluce is completing a PhD, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne
