Data Science Intern
Built an interactive visualization dashboard for the 'Network Medicine Residues from Water' project, visualizing GP prescription data and pharmaceutical residues in sewage water across two neighborhoods in Drachten.
- ▸Built interactive dashboard visualizing prescribing behavior of general practitioners
- ▸Visualized ~30 pharmaceutical residues detected in sewage water samples
- ▸Part of a network with 46 stakeholders from healthcare, water, government, and research
- ▸Compared two Drachten neighborhoods to study the link between prescriptions and water contamination
Context
Researchable is a Groningen-based data company. I interned there working on a project called "Network Medicine Residues from Water" — part of the Northern Dutch Network run by the Healthy Aging Network Northern Netherlands (HANNN), which brings together 46 stakeholders from healthcare, the water sector, government, research institutions, and tech.
The problem: every year, over 190 tons of pharmaceutical residues end up in Dutch water systems, harming the environment and drinking water quality. With climate change and an aging population, it's only getting worse.
What I Built
I built an interactive visualization dashboard that let stakeholders explore two things side by side:
- Prescribing behavior — how often general practitioners in two Drachten neighborhoods prescribed different types of medication, broken down by year, age group, and gender
- Medicine residues in sewage water — the concentration of around 30 pharmaceutical residues measured in sewage samples from those same neighborhoods
The two neighborhoods were chosen deliberately: one was a "bloeizone" (a community with a strong focus on healthy living), and the other was a control area without that emphasis. By comparing them, the project aimed to understand whether lifestyle-focused interventions actually affect what ends up in the water.
Impact
The dashboard made it possible for non-technical stakeholders — healthcare providers, water authorities, policymakers — to explore complex prescription and water quality data interactively. It was designed to be reusable for other neighborhoods and healthcare providers as the network expands.
What I Learned
Working on this project showed me how data visualization can make a real difference when you're dealing with stakeholders from completely different domains. Making something that a water authority engineer and a GP can both understand and use — that's a different kind of challenge from just building a dashboard.