The ADAPT Centre and School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin is inviting applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Doherty.

This position would suit a curious and driven individual with a background in computer science, psychology or the health sciences and a desire to develop new skills and knowledge spanning diverse other disciplines, or a candidate with expertise and experience in the practice and methods of human-computer interaction, product and/or user interface design. This position provides the opportunity to make a real difference to the lived experience and practice of care for patients and healthcare professionals — through the design, development and evaluation of digital tools to support and advance care for chronic, co- morbid conditions through general practice.

The candidate will be interested in understanding, adopting and developing a human-centred approach to the design, development and evaluation of digital technologies to support care. The candidate will complete a research project of their own shaping with the objective of realising a real-world impact on the professional practice of primary care and lived experiences of individuals with chronic, co-morbid conditions. This project will broadly concern the design, development and evaluation of novel digital tools for increasingly caring and effective conversations and relationships between patients and general practitioners.

While this project will build directly upon a wealth of prior research by the interdisciplinary team of academic supervisors, the candidate will also be provided the scope to shape this project in the direction of their own interests, and as informed by an initial programme of needs-finding research. Possible research topics include, although are not limited to: new and innovative means of accessing and supporting the provision of health and mental healthcare; digital tools to facilitate the collaboration, coordination and decision-making of care, including to improve patient-provider relationships; understanding the role of materials, tools, methods and systems to improve the clinical practice of primary and/or secondary healthcare; the self-report, sharing and disclosure of health-related data to advance wellbeing on individual and/or population scales; the practice of participatory design for health technology acceptance, engagement and adoption; and the development and evaluation of novel tools to support the leveraging of health data for care.

See http://bit.ly/adaptphd or https://kdoherty.ie for details and to apply.