PhD candidate in data driven patient-centered care

Job description

Do you want to advance patient care by making treatments truly personalized using innovative data-driven tools? And do you want to optimize clinical decision-making based on real-world data instead of group means? Apply for this PhD position!

While personalized and patient-centered healthcare is advancing, many patients still receive one-size-fits-all treatments based on guidelines rather than individual patient values, needs, and characteristics. Clinicians aim to incorporate such values and preferences in decision-making through experience and training in the evidence-based medicine paradigm. However, this process is currently not supported by validated, user-friendly, and patient-centered tools. Decisions are, therefore, at risk of being insufficiently individualized.

In this PhD position, you will further develop and investigate a new framework of data-supported, patient-centered care. This framework is focused on patient-specific treatment and improvement goals using the Patient-Specific Needs Evaluation (PSN). The PSN is a patient-specific but generic instrument that identifies:

• The patient’s most important information needs.
• Treatment goals.
• The individual’s threshold to be satisfied with the treatment results.
• Evaluates whether this threshold is reached at follow-up.

You will take the steps required to move the PSN beyond its current application in hand and wrist conditions. These steps include adapting, validating, implementing, and evaluating the PSN in new patient populations (i.e., orthopedics, plastic reconstructive surgery, and rehabilitation) using state-of-the-art psychometric approaches and data science techniques.

You will play a key role in creating data-driven strategies to optimize this brief, simple, and generic yet patient-specific instrument and its use. By doing so, you will contribute to offering individual patients the most appropriate treatment and prevent ineffective or too expensive treatments. 

Work environment

This project is a collaboration between several Erasmus MC departments: Plastic, Reconstructive and Hand Surgery, Rehabilitation Medicine, Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, and the Value-based Healthcare Team. Clinical partners include Xpert Clinics and Rijndam Revalidatie. The PhD position is part of the Erasmus MC Fellowship project “Utilizing the Patient-Specific Needs Evaluation for Data-Supported and Individualized Treatment (UNITE)”.

As a PhD student for this position, you will be employed at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Hand Surgery of the Erasmus MC. This department integrates clinical work with research and offers a dynamic, challenging, cooperative environment with many national and international collaborations. In addition to the direct project collaborators in UNITE, you work with researchers from the Hand-Wrist Study Group.

The research will be conducted under the supervision of dr. Robbert Wouters and prof.dr. Ruud Selles.

Qualifications and skills

We are looking for a motivated candidate who wants to contribute to the rapidly developing field of data-driven and patient-centered healthcare with the following qualifications:

• A relevant MSc degree (e.g., health sciences, medicine, epidemiology, movement sciences, physiotherapy sciences, technical medicine).
• (Demonstrable) affinity with clinical research, data analysis, routine data collection, measurement instruments, and the topic under study.
• Collaborative capacity, team spirit, and communicative skills: working with many different stakeholders is an essential aspect of this project.
• Passionate to transfer research findings into clinical practice.
• Strong Dutch and English language skills (written and oral).
• Accurate, result-driven, and enthusiastic.

Before you apply please check our conditions for employment.

Terms of employment

• You will receive a temporary position for 3 years. 
• The gross monthly salary amounts a minimum of € 3.493,- and a maximum of € 5.504,- (scale 10).
• Excellent fringe benefits, such as a 13th month that is already paid out in November and a individual travel expense package. 
• An International Office which aids you in preparing for you arrival and stay. 
• Pension insurance with ABP. We take care of approximately 2/3 of the monthly contribution. 
• Special benefits, such as a incompany physiotherapist and bicycle repairer. And there is also a gym where you can work on your fitness after work. 

More information

For information about this position, please contact Robbert Wouters, assistant professor, r.wouters@erasmusmc.nl or 06 535 318 75.

If you are excited by the thought of this position and would like to apply, please do so by using the application form on our website.

No agencies please.