Postdoctoral Fellow

Post Date: 22-May-2024

Close Date: 23-Jun-2024

Title: Postdoctoral Fellow

Department: School of Population Health/Dept of General Practice, RCSI

Tenure: Specified Purposes Contract for up to 24 months

Salary: Appointable at Post-Doctoral Level 2b Scale

Location: St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2

Reporting to: Professor Kathleen Bennett / Professor Patrick Redmond

Start Date: June/July 2024

Closing date: 10th June 2024

RCSI is a community of academic, research, clinical and professional staff working collaboratively to lead the world to better health. Here, you will thrive in an innovative and inclusive atmosphere and your personal development and wellbeing will be supported. We invite you to join us to help deliver on our exciting mission "To educate, nurture and discover for the benefit of human health".

We seek candidates whose experience to date has prepared them to contribute to our commitment to the "Race Equality Action Plan 2021-2024" at RCSI. Our students come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds. This makes our university stronger and ensures we hire the best talent.

For each of the last six years, RCSI has been positioned in the Top 300 of universities worldwide in the Times Higher World university Rankings. We are proud to announce that RCSI has ranked first in the world for "Good Health and Well-being" in the Times Higher Education #SDG Impact Rankings 2023. This reflects our commitment to supporting people of all ages to live healthy lives and our work to promote the concepts of well-being and positive health.

Our values of R espect, C ollaboration, S cholarship and I nnovation continue to unite and direct our purpose. The RCSI School of Population Health is working to address the world's population health challenges through research, education and collaboration.

Multidisciplinary faculty and researchers in the School collaborate with national and international partners to develop expert knowledge and multifaceted solutions to positively impact population health. As a new school, established in 2022, we are looking to transform the way that population-level data and research platforms are deployed in Ireland to make key decisions for prevention and reduction of chronic disease burden.

The RCSI Department of General Practice offers a vibrant research environment for multidisciplinary collaboration, with a broad range of experts, patients and institutions to deliver projects with direct patient benefit. Research methodologies span from qualitative projects to big data studies, prospective research, health service development projects, and synthesising available published evidence.

FutureNeuro is the national research centre focused on chronic and rare neurological diseases, funded by Science Foundation Ireland and based at RCSI. FutureNeuro brings together multidisciplinary scientific teams with clinicians and industry to deliver advances in diagnostic medicine, personalized and network therapeutics, cross-linked by a national e-Health infrastructure platform that is disease-focused.

FutureNeuro, as part of the EMPOWER spoke, is seeking a suitably qualified Research Fellow to join its eHealth team. The FutureNeuro eHealth portfolio includes development and implementation of Application Programming Interface (APIs) for data exchange between devices and applications, data analytics and machine learning, clinical trials of eHealth solutions, development of clinical decision support tools.

Overall purpose of this position: The position will involve working in the School of Population Health and Department of General Practice in RCSI, and with Centric Health. Centric Health primary care practice data group presents a unique opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art population-based analytic data system that serves multiple needs of decision support, population monitoring, and comparative effectiveness research. The project involves a unique consortium of academic, data ethics and protection experts, health system, and public health, as innovators to develop a multi-purpose registry that simultaneously serves population monitoring and management, clinical and patient decision-making to prevent and manage diabetes and reduce the burden of its complication.

Specifically, the duties of the post are as follows:

1. Design and develop database architecture: Collaborate with IT specialists and clinical staff to design and implement secure and scalable database solutions that accommodate large volumes of electronic health records.
2. Data integration and management: Ensure seamless integration and management of health data from various sources, maintaining high standards of data quality and integrity.
3. Analytics and reporting: Develop and maintain analytical tools and reporting mechanisms to support research objectives, including generating custom reports and datasets for analysis by research teams.
4. Compliance and ethics coordination: Manage and oversee all aspects of data privacy and security in line with GDPR and other relevant regulations. Coordinate with the Health Research Consent Declaration Committee (HRCDC) to ensure compliance with ethical standards.
5. Stakeholder engagement: Work closely with clinical partners, healthcare providers, and research teams to align database management strategies with project goals.
6. Technical support and troubleshooting: Provide ongoing support and technical expertise to end-users of the database system, resolving issues and ensuring optimal system performance.
7. Documentation and training: Develop comprehensive documentation for database systems and conduct training sessions for users to ensure proper use and understanding of the system.
8. Project management: Oversee the timeline and deliverables of the database aspects of the project, ensuring milestones are met and aligned with the broader project objectives.
9. Lead, co-author and prepare papers for peer-reviewed publications, reports/policy briefs and presentations to stakeholders.
10. Disseminate results of the research at scientific meetings and through other channels.

Person Specification:

1. PhD in a discipline including health informatics, computer science, statistics, data science, or a related discipline.
2. Significant experience in database management, particularly with health data or in a clinical setting.
3. Strong technical skills in SQL, NoSQL, data warehousing, and data integration tools.
4. Proven track record of managing data in compliance with GDPR and other data protection standards.
5. Experience in working with health research ethics committees and understanding of ethical approval processes.
6. Strong analytical skills and proficiency in using statistical software (i.e. R, Stata etc.).
7. Excellent communication skills, capable of effectively interacting with a diverse group of technical and non-technical stakeholders.
8. Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced, research-oriented environment.
9. Project management skills: ability to ensure that project plans are communicated and that all timelines are met.
10. Self-starter with the ability to work effectively as part of a team; is cordial, tolerant and willing to help others; is cooperative and patient; shares work and information; establishes rapport, can influence and develop effective networks.
11. Conscientious: has a pro-active approach to work, anticipating and resolving problems in advance; has keen attention to detail, from anticipating and addressing issues in advance to understanding requests and delivering quality work with minimal errors.
12. Flexibility: can operate flexibly within a busy environment, can shift focus when required.

"We are all too aware that imposter syndrome and the confidence gap can sometimes stop fantastic candidates putting themselves forward, so please do submit an application — we'd love to hear from you."