Internships/Co-ops that favor mathematical skills?

[wolfensohn]

I'm a pharmacy student, but my undergrad degree was in math (I completed the prereqs for pharmacy during the last few years). I've heard about places that favor skills relating to IT work, but I was wondering if there are any community/hospital pharmacies that also need some people to work with more 'mathematical' aspects. I'm not up to residencies yet, and so right now I'm looking at some internships/co ops.

(Sorry, I'm completely new to pharmacy, so I don't know any of the practices so far)

In my undergrad, I did pretty well in numerical analysis and differential equations, and did a little programming on the side, but I'm in no way competent as a software engineer, or IT worker, though I can train in that area. I want to know which skills I should practice in order to get selected for an intern in this field (if it exists).

On a side note, would any compounding "software" require 'advanced' math knowledge? Or is it all counting pills? Research wise, I heard there is some related field in pharmacokinetics.

EDIT: dang, I posted this in wrong forum, meant for pharmacy forum, not pre pharm

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[owlegrad]

I'm a pharmacy student, but my undergrad degree was in math (I completed the prereqs for pharmacy during the last few years). I've heard about places that favor skills relating to IT work, but I was wondering if there are any community/hospital pharmacies that also need some people to work with more 'mathematical' aspects. I'm not up to residencies yet, and so right now I'm looking at some internships/co ops.

(Sorry, I'm completely new to pharmacy, so I don't know any of the practices so far)

In my undergrad, I did pretty well in numerical analysis and differential equations, and did a little programming on the side, but I'm in no way competent as a software engineer, or IT worker, though I can train in that area. I want to know which skills I should practice in order to get selected for an intern in this field (if it exists).

On a side note, would any compounding "software" require 'advanced' math knowledge? Or is it all counting pills? Research wise, I heard there is some related field in pharmacokinetics.

EDIT: dang, I posted this in wrong forum, meant for pharmacy forum, not pre pharm

Some kind mod can move it for you if they are so inclined. Many of us frequent both forums though so it may not be such a big dealing the end.

I don't know the answer to your questions though, sorry.

 

[Project2015]

It's an interesting question (one that I haven't seen before either)... so I'm interested in the answer as well.

 

[Momrowgal]

Theoretically there should be opportunities in the future for clinically-trained people who also know IT, but in current practice it seems there are usually two completely different shops in any healthcare organization who just hire their own. The geeks will not care that you are a pharmacist/nurse/MD/whatever and the clinicians will not care about your IT skills.

However, it sounds like you are more interested in mathematical analysis rather than discrete math (which you would need for CS). Consider adding an MPH or MS in biostatistics to your PharmD credentials and learning a high-level stats program (best would be SAS). Very applicable to any work on clinical studies and SAS is also used in pharmacokinetic analysis for drug companies.

 

[wolfensohn]

thanks for the replies. yes, i do know some R and other low level languages. I know some C, java and C++, but not much beyond that, certainly not enough to do anything a standard programmer can do. I was considering Biostatistics, it looks very interesting from a pharmaceutical point of view.

Also, does anyone know any software/programming language that is awesome for modeling reaction rates/systems physiology? It seems like something I can do in my free time. Modeling parts of the body, basically.... like graphic design/algorithm design.

 

[Momrowgal]

I have a link for you, Wolfensohn. I am not a pharmacist myself so don't do this kind of work, but I'm sure there are major opportunities. It sounds like rather than biostatistics (which would be more clinical trials/public health oriented) you are looking at a pharmaceutics-related field?


http://www.aapspharmaceutica.com/inside/focus_groups/ModelSim/imagespdfs/MS_LTSTL_modeler.pdf

Maybe you should just write to this guy and ask him--this sounds like exactly what you might be looking for.