Inside the Architecture and Service Design Undergraduate Internship

Martha Timlin, Overview:

In 2025, the Architecture and Service Design team participated in a structured internship programme for BSc undergraduate Computer Science students from multiple universities.

The programme was designed to support early-career technologists while building critical architectural capability within HSE Technology Transformation (TT).

The following reflections from two interns highlight the range, responsibility, and real world impact of the work undertaken across both cohorts.

We wish to thank our 2025 interns for their energy, curiosity, enthusiasm, and technical aptitude. They were a valued addition to the team throughout the year.

Alexandra Phelan: Internship Experience at the Architecture Service and Design Team, January – July 2025

In 2025 I completed an internship with the Architecture Service and Design team in the Health Service Executive (HSE), where I had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience across enterprise architecture, digital services, research, and innovation within a large public healthcare organisation.

As part of the placement, I completed the IASA (International Association of Software Architects) course, where along with my fellow interns, I successfully passed the IASA exam. This training provided a strong introduction to architectural principles and helped demonstrate how a computer science background can support wider system design governance, strategic planning and architectural thinking.

Throughout the internship, the interns attended weekly meetings across different areas of the organisation. These sessions provided valuable insight into the scale and complexity of the HSE TT and helped me to understand how architecture supports collaboration between clinical, operational, digital, and research teams.

A key part of this service design internship was hands-on user-centred work. Along with Oleksii, Irfan, Ashraful, Enya, Aaron, and Omoligho, I took part in an in-person user research workshop in Dublin, facilitated by the Digital User Research Team.

This experience highlighted the importance of engaging directly with users and applying research insights to the design of digital health services.

From a technical and architectural perspective, the intern team completed training on the architecture application tool, Ardoq, gaining experience in enterprise architecture modelling and documentation.

Working under supervision, we collaborated with the AI and Automation Centre of Excellence department on the AI Inventory Survey. This work was put into production as a tool to identify and understand how AI is currently being used across the organisation, and to support governance and future planning for AI use. Oleksii and I worked on appointment data within the HSE App. We supported early planning, architectural understanding, data flows and documentation of Breast Check appointments, which are now live in the HSE App.

Another task of the intern team was mapping HL7 Healthlink files, which contributed to a shared understanding of data flows used within the HSE App.

This discovery work was further developed when our intern team was invited to Microsoft Offices to take part in a hackathon focused on prompt engineering.

During the hackathon, we worked on HL7 Healthlink referral use cases and explored how applied AI agents could support real healthcare services. This HL7 – FHIR work was later continued and expanded by interns Cian and Dylan, who mapped the Chronic Disease Management HL7 files, which are now live in the app.

The internship gave me the opportunity to attend several external events, including the Health Summit and the National Open-Source Innovation Summit 2025. Alongside this, I had access to the Training and Development site Pluralsight where I completed Microsoft Azure courses.

Overall, this internship had a significant impact on my career direction. Although my degree is in Computer Science, the experience introduced me to enterprise and solution architecture in a real-world healthcare setting and demonstrated how impactful this work can be. As a result, I am keen to continue with further IASA certification and to pursue a career in architecture.

I would strongly encourage other students to consider internships within the HSE Technology Transformation, and other departments to continue supporting student placements. The opportunity to contribute to real projects, learn from experienced professionals, and collaborate across teams has been invaluable. I felt supported and encouraged throughout the internship and am grateful to our line manager, Martha, who facilitated many additional learning and mentoring opportunities, as well as to the senior architects who were always approachable, shared their expertise, and were invested in our development.

Cian Gleeson, HSE Architecture and Service Design Intern: July 2025 –January 2026

My name is Cian Gleeson, and I worked as an intern with the HSE Digital for Care 2030 Programme from July to January, alongside Dylan Perry, within the Architecture and Service Design team.

We joined during a handover period with the previous intern cohort and assumed full responsibility for ongoing work after their departure.

Enterprise Architecture and Ardoq Application

We worked closely with the HSE Architecture team using Ardoq to support enterprise architecture activities. Our primary focus was programme inventory work, mapping Digital for Care 2030 initiatives, systems, applications, and organisational relationships. We also supported completion of AI inventory work during the handover phase.

Later in the internship, we worked on an interesting project, mapping an ICU bed-level architecture project in Ardoq, modelling ICU beds, along with their associated hardware, software, and system dependencies within the hospital environment.

IASA Architecture Training

We completed formal architecture training through IASA (International Association of Software Architects), applying structured architecture methods to model current-state and future-state business and technology scenarios. This training strengthened our understanding of enterprise architecture principles and their application within large scale organisations.

National Ambulance Service Data Flow

Dylan and I visited the National Ambulance Service site near University Hospital Limerick to understand end-to-end patient data flows. This included observing how patient information is captured during transport using a tablet system within the ambulance and handed over digitally to emergency department emergency department staff on arrival. We also saw the patient journey from ED through to radiology, which gave context to the radiology referral data work we had been working on.

Microsoft AI and HL7 Work

Dylan and I study BSc Science with AI and Machine Learning, and we have had the opportunity to apply a lot of our academic learning. We participated in two Hackathons at the Microsoft Offices focused on applied artificial intelligence in healthcare.

This included exploring the use of AI to generate synthetic HL7 data for testing and development, as well as examining approaches to data anonymisation that protect patient privacy while preserving analytical value.

Chronic Disease Management, Healthlink, and the HSE App

A major focus of our internship involved analysing Chronic Disease Management HL7 data received via Healthlink. We reviewed and mapped approximately 90 anonymised files to understand structure, required and optional fields, coding standards, and dependencies. Dylan focused on detailed single-file analysis, while I examined patterns and relationships across the full dataset.

This work fed directly into collaboration with the HSE App team, where we explored how Chronic Disease Management information could be displayed within the app. While not involved in design directly, we showcased which data elements could be reliably surfaced, how they might be grouped, and which elements should not be displayed. This work is now live in the HSE App for patients.

Synthetic Data Generation

We continued work in an environment first accessed during the second Microsoft hackathon, developing two complementary synthetic data generation approaches. Dylan focused on producing large volumes of fully randomised synthetic HL7 files, while I developed a targeted approach using GPT models to generate highly specific clinical scenarios with detailed patient histories. Clinical use cases were informed and validated by a clinician to ensure the scenarios reflected real-world healthcare contexts. These approaches supported both broad testing and scenario-specific validation.

The Architecture team used the outputs to support discovery work on HSE App features. We also had the opportunity to present our work to the National Shared Care Record team and the Chief Data and Analytics Office. We hope the 2026 intern cohort will continue to build on this synthetic data generation work.

Conclusion

The placement clarified my future career direction and confirmed my interest in healthcare technology, particularly solution and enterprise architecture as a blend of technical expertise and stakeholder-focused design. The skills I developed—technical capability, problem solving, communication and professional practice—provide a strong foundation for my final year studies and transition into a graduate role.