Jobs Announcements

Context:

Medtronic introduction

Medtronic is a leading medical technology company employing 85 000 people in 145 countries. Recognized for its expertise in cardiac, vascular, restorative and minimally invasive and diabetes therapies, the group is evolving into a global healthcare solutions company.

Medtronic is committed to improve the lives of people through innovative medical technologies, services, and solutions. In a market that is becoming more commoditized, Medtronic is leading efforts to implement a holistic Healthcare Solution strategy. Its objective is to offer customers’ clinical value from therapy innovations as well as economic value.

In this context, Medtronic is shifting its business to address this challenge. To increase value not only with devices but across the care continuum, it has created the Medtronic Integrated Health Solution℠ business (IHS). This new offering moves beyond devices to focus on system-level services and solutions.

IHS is helping hospitals, public and private payers and health systems. Its goal is to align value within the care continuum by delivering more efficient and improved care to patients through process excellence, managed services and care pathways management.

IHU Introduction

IHU Strasbourg is a unique medical and surgical center dedicated to the management of digestive diseases. The Institute combines 3 functions:

• A healthcare center offering personalized treatment using the least invasive techniques;
• A research center gathering teams to design and develop instruments and procedures for the future;
• An international training center for professionals and students driven to learn the most advanced minimally invasive practices.

Medtronic IHS / IHU Collaboration

Medtronic IHS recently finalized a 5 year collaboration and research partnership with IHU Strasbourg to develop common expertise around patient pathway management and setting Value Base Healthcare (Patient Outcomes…) principles in IHU Strasbourg’s DNA.

This collaboration agreement is structured in 4 work packages, each work package include some specific R&D projects. This PhD position will support one of these projects.

Beyond PhD funding, Medtronic’s contribution to this partnership relies on a strong organization:

• Building up a dedicated team at IHU Strasbourg that will be in charge to test and translate organizational innovation into IHU daily operations.

• R&D project drive and guidance

• Support from relevant capabilities and expertise from Medtronic.

• Setting up an IT healthcare platform (patient registry, pathway management, patient relationship management)

The PhD Student will have to collaborate and leverage this organization in his daily interaction.

Summary of project: Complex care pathways require several outpatient clinic consultations, laboratory tests, imaging, assessment, multidisciplinary meetings, hospitalization, and post-operative follow-up. Complex care processes may be spread over many “episodes of care” and involve as many patient’s trips to the care center. Each step is generally a function of the previous step and therefore programmed as a result of the latter, which entails a period, in days or even weeks, between each pathway’ step. This delay may be detrimental to the proper patient care, particularly in the context of cancer. The articulation of different episodes of care is not always the objective, nor is working according to protocols and an accurate evaluation of the care process. A possible solution is to gather as much care episodes in one day for each patient to accelerate critical medical decisions, propose in a timely surgical treatment – if necessary, and limit travel and simplify patient procedures.

In addition to that complexity, key resources on the patient pathway like OR or diagnostic imaging face complex demand patterns (variability in demand, elective vs. non elective cases) that must be addressed through a robust session management system to match access expectation from all the healthcare professionals and the patient alike. To date, a few mathematical models have been developed to determine optimal patient routing in care pathways. The deployment of these models in practice is limited; this is due to the complexity of the models, the absence of corresponding software programs which can be used in a day to day hospital setting and limited generic applicability of the models. Furthermore, despite the mathematical complexity, most models are not able to fully entail all characteristics of the planning & scheduling process at the hospital. On an operational level, dynamic allocation of patients to appointment slots is carried out in a few hospitals, using systems which are usually placed in the waiting room. However, the intelligence behind those systems is limited, leaving a vast room for improvement.

In this PhD project we aim to develop a systematic approach to optimize a patient’s journey, taking into account a large number of constraints and optimal usage of institution resources. We incorporate the diagnostic phase (special emphasis on one-stop-shop concepts to shorten patient LOS in care trajectory and reduce hospital visits), surgical episode and follow up phase. The project involves tactical and operational levels of planning & scheduling; on a tactical level a mathematical model will be developed to allocate capacity to patient groups and determine optimal patient routing (planning). On operational level day to day clinic operations will be optimized using dynamic patient scheduling. Techniques from Surgical Process Modeling will be used and expanded to analyze and optimize patient pathway patterns.

The research will be a joint collaboration between IHU/IRCAD, Integrated Health Solutions, Medtronic, the Center for Healthcare Operations Improvement and Research, University of Twente, and the Faculté de Médecine, Université de Rennes 1. The location of the PhD student is flexible, however it is required for the student to spend a significant amount of time in Strasbourg and also to visit the research institutions in Rennes and Twente regularly. Daily supervision will carried out by dr. Zonderland (IHS/CHOIR), supported by prof. Janin (Univ. of Rennes), dr. Forester (Univ. of Haute-Alsace) and prof. Boucherie (CHOIR).

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has a vacancy for one four-year PhD fellowship in Visual Computing: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/128938/phd-fellowship-in-information-technology

Of particular interest are highly motivated and skillful candidates interested in computer vision / image analysis and machine / deep learning for applications within the medical field (related to ultrasound for example) or autonomy and robotics. Research related to graphics, visualization and augmented reality is also of great interest, the most important thing is to find a motivated candidate with excellent skills and he/she will decide on the topic of the PhD.

Deadline: October 9th

Would you like to work with the latest in medical image computing and visualization at the

same time as you help future patients? Do you want to strengthen our research team in Visual Computing at the department of Computer and Information Science (IDI) and work within a European network of leading universities, hospitals and companies?

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering (IME) in Trondheim, Norway invites applications to a 3-year early stage researcher (ESR/PhD) position in medical image analysis and image-guided laparoscopic surgery within the EU project HiPerNav (High Performance soft-tissue Navigation), a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network funded project.

PhD position: The ESR project includes research and development of novel approaches to multi-modal (CT, MR, Ultrasound and Laparoscopic) image segmentation and registration in the context of soft-tissue navigation for improved patient outcome. The project will investigate fast, accurate and fully automatic methods for extracting relevant structures from preoperative CT/MR and intraoperative Ultrasound/Laparoscopic data. All available data for any given patient will be aligned and accumulated into a Patient Specific Model (PSM) in real-time as new and updated images emerge. The specific content of the ESR project can to a certain degree be adapted to the background of the candidate, as long as it is within the core field of the HiPerNav project. This work will be part of the activities related to research and development of new medical technology, applied cross-disciplinary research in medical image computing and soft-tissue navigation, clinical evaluation and scientific dissemination of knowledge.

Deadline: November 11th 

The full announcement can be found here:

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/129891/phd-position-early-stage-researcher-esr-in-medical-technology

For further information, please contact Associate Professor Frank Lindseth, e-mail: frankl@idi.ntnu.no, phone +47 928 09 372

We are looking for a candidate to a three year PhD (Early Stage Researcher) in image-guided laparoscopic surgery in an EU project, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network project; HiPerNav.

SINTEF
The Department for Medical technology has 27 research scientists that perform research and innovation within the fields of minimally invasive therapy and diagnostics, image processing, ultrasound in medicine, navigation technology applied to surgery, software development in minimally invasive interventions / image-guided surgery, and robotics in medicine. The department participates in several large scale projects, like the Centre of Research based Innovation CIUS (Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions for health care, maritime, and oil & gas) and the Norwegian National Advisory Unit for Ultrasound and image-guided therapy (www.usigt.org).

Description

PhD position.
The PhD project will include research, development, and use of navigation technology and imaging methods to improve patient treatment. The candidate will be employed by SINTEF at Department for Medical technology in Trondheim. Core activities will be related to research and development of new medical technology, applied cross-disciplinary research of novel tool developments, ultrasound in combination with medical imaging/visualization and navigation technology, clinical evaluations, and scientific dissemination of knowledge.

Qualifications for applicant:
• The specific content of the PhD project can to a certain degree be adapted to the background of the candidate, as long as it is within the core field of the HiPerNav project. Master of science in electro and/or computing, medical cybernetics, biophysics, physics, and mathematics are, however, particularly relevant.
• Strong academic record with a weighted average grade of master’s or equivalent education with a grade of B or higher, in accordance with NTNU’s grading system, before start date for the position.
• Special interests for and competence within medical technology, ultrasound and medical imaging, development of technology for improved image guided patient diagnostics and therapy, practical experience with research methods, and R&D work at research institutes, universities and/or the health sector can be advantageous.
• We emphasize collaborative skills, initiative, ability to accomplish tasks, practical skills, and ability to create and establish new projects in collaboration with colleagues.

Rule for eligibility of ESR candidates:
Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) shall, at the time of recruitment by the host organisation, be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and have not been awarded a doctoral degree. Mobility Rule: at the time of recruitment by the host organisation, researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of their host organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the reference date. Compulsory national service and/or short stays such as holidays are not taken into account. As far as international European interest organisations or international organisations are concerned, this rule does not apply to the hosting of eligible researchers. However, the appointed researcher must not have spent more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to their recruitment at the host organization.

See more at:
https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=1131&ProjectId=143794&DepartmentId=19029&MediaId=5