Research Assistant - Rapid Health Technology Assessment

Job Title: Research Assistant

Department: Dept Public Health & Epidemiology, School of Population Health

Reporting to: Dr Barbara Clyne

Location: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Dublin 2

Contract/Duration: Specified Purpose Contract (18 months), full-time

Remuneration: IUA scale: Research Assistant, up to level 6

Closing Date: 4th February 2024

Project Overview

This project is an eighteen-month project funded by a Health Research Board (HRB) Applied Partnership Award (APA), led by Dr Barbara Clyne (RCSI) and Dr Mairin Ryan (Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA)). HIQA is an independent authority that exists to improve health and social care services for the people of Ireland. HIQA’s Health Technology Assessment (HTA) directorate discharges the organisation’s statutory function to advise the Minister for Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of health interventions.

Summary of Post

Background to the Project

HTA is a systematic evaluation of the benefits and harms of a health technology

that aims to inform healthcare policy such as investment (or disinvestment) decisions. Producing HTA’s is a lengthy process involving searching and assessing the available evidence on the clinical, economic, social, and ethical issues related to a health technology. HTAs support and inform decision-making by policy makers, who are increasingly requesting HTAs to be done more quickly. These Rapid HTAs must balance the trade-off between robustness of the evidence base and efficiency of production. However, consensus regarding what ‘rapid’ is, and regarding methodological approaches and pragmatic guidance for rapid HTA conduct is limited to date. This project is a collaboration between RCSI researchers and HIQA, with the overall aim of elaborating the definition and role of rapid HTAs. The outcomes of the project are expected to influence national-level policy, health service decisions and international practice, and therefore may be highly impactful.

This aim will be achieved across a number of work packages which will involve:

1. Establishing a public and patient involvement (PPI) panel;
2. Comparing and contrasting different rapid HTA products internationally and mapping their specific steps through a scoping review;
3. Eliciting stakeholders’ preferences for rapid HTA products and perceptions of the role of stakeholder engagement in rapid HTAs through qualitative semi-structured interviews and a discrete choice experiment.

Person Specification

The successful candidate will be a highly motivated researcher ideally, with a mixed methods background and will have some experience in at least one of the methodologies listed above.

Specifically, the duties of the post are:

• Work with the PI, Postdoctoral Researcher, PPI panel and wider research team, to ensure the success of the project;
• Support in the conduct of the studies listed above including:
  • Assisting with a scoping review literature search, data extraction and analysis,
  • Recruiting participants,
  • Assisting with conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews, discrete choice experiment.
• Support research ethics applications where appropriat
• Contribute to peer reviewed academic publications;
• Assist in the dissemination of research findings to academic and policy audiences (via conferences etc.);
• Support the preparation for project management group meetings;
• Undertake other duties and responsibilities as may be determined by the PI.