PhD Scholarship for Designing Health Futures - Reimagining and Redesigning a safer, more equitable and sustainable Immunoglobulin System for Australia
Job No.: 669924
Location: Caulfield campus
Employment Type: Full-time
Duration: 3.5-year fixed-term appointment
Remuneration: The successful applicant will receive a tax-free stipend to the value of $50,000 per annum full time rate and a Relocation Allowance (up to $1000 interstate).
- Be inspired, every day
- Take your career in exciting and rewarding directions at one of the world’s top 80 universities
The Opportunity
This is an unprecedented opportunity for an outstanding PhD candidate working across the areas of health futures, participatory design and medical innovation, to secure a scholarship to undertake a Design PhD within the OPTIMAL NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence (CRE). OPTIMAL brings together patients, leading researchers, health professionals and health economists to generate the new knowledge and research capacity required to design, build and implement better systems for delivering immunoglobulin therapy.
Immunoglobulin therapy is used in many different conditions with the CRE concentrating on immunoglobulin use; to prevent and treat infection in patients with immune deficiencies (including blood cancers), and for immunomodulation in immune and inflammatory disorders (including Kawasaki disease and myasthenia gravis).
Immunoglobulin products are precious national resources manufactured from blood plasma, donated and paid for by the community. The product cost alone is greater than $800 million per year. Improved systems and processes are required to deliver these therapies to patients, through monitoring of outcomes, adverse effects, and understanding of patient preferences and experiences for how their care is delivered. The OPTIMAL CRE will address national priorities to inform policy and practice, providing new evidence to enable immunoglobulin being used where it is the most valuable and reducing costs to the community.
This PhD opportunity will be embedded in a multidisciplinary group of designers, clinicians and researchers within the OPTIMAL CRE. The PhD candidate will draw on participatory, service, system design and ethnographic approaches to work with diverse stakeholders, for example clinicians, researchers, patients, families, government, industry and healthcare partners, to envisage and help build better health delivery systems and clinical outcomes for patients requiring immunoglobulin products. Research will involve understanding patient journeys; co-designing and prototyping new service pathways, and developing future models and systems of care. The PhD will contribute to redesigning the patient experience for immunoglobulin therapy across Australia and around the world. At a broader level the PhD contributes to the role of design in shaping safer, more equitable and sustainable healthcare futures and innovating in the design methods required to envisage and build health futures.
The PhD candidate will be located in the Monash Emerging Technologies Lab (ETLab), one of Australia’s most innovative research facilities positioned across the faculties of Art, Design and Architecture and Information Technology. Co-supervision will be provided from the Transfusion Research Unit, located in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. This PhD position will be located in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the Monash Caulfield Campus, with visits to other campuses.
The Emerging Technologies Research Lab, directed by Professor Sarah Pink, is an interdisciplinary and international research and knowledge community. We investigate the futures, present and past of our social, experiential and political worlds. Our world-class academic and engaged scholarship innovates and delivers new techniques and knowledge carefully designed to deliver new, inclusive and effective understandings and impact in response to the urgent need to better plan for futures with and for people and other species, emerging technologies and climate. The Lab’s internationally leading researchers bring together academic scholarship with engagement with external stakeholders, and advocate for the design of better, responsible and ethical futures. Our work also advances new ethnographic and futures methodologies drawing from design, anthropology, sociology and science and technology studies. The Emerging Technologies Research Lab is across the Faculties of Information Technology and of Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) at Monash University, and was established in 2018.
The Transfusion Research Unit (TRU), directed by Professor Erica Wood has expertise in transfusion medicine, haematology, epidemiology and registry science, and leads national and international clinical registries, clinical trials, health economics analysis and systematic reviews across a range of areas. TRU was established in 2008 and their internationally recognised research and educational activities include: clinical quality registries, clinical trials and cohort studies, health economics analyses, systematic review and other projects, biobanking for correlative studies, educational programs and training, including postgraduate degree studies. TRU works closely with clinical leaders and organisations to collect, analyse and report data about conditions requiring major and/or complex transfusion support, and in a range of blood disorders, including haematological malignancies and bone marrow failure syndromes.
To reimagine and redesign a safer, more equitable and sustainable Immunoglobulin System for Australia, we need the best and brightest minds. As such we invite suitable candidates to apply for the following exciting opportunity:
To be considered for this position you should fulfil the requirements for Monash HDR candidates and have a background in a relevant design discipline, be interested in developing innovative new research in Designing Health Futures and in interdisciplinary connections to Medicine and STEM fields. You should be committed to undertaking research into future health systems, emerging technology and equitable health futures. Through the PhD you will participate in the OPTIMAL CRE by undertaking your own original research designed to contribute to the OPTIMAL co-design agenda, supervised by Associate Professor Leah Heiss with clinical expertise to be provided by Professor Erica Wood and Dr Catriona Parker. Through your research you will have opportunities to collaborate in teams with researchers from haematology, new technologies, health economics, transfusion medicine, nursing, neurology and infectious and inflammatory diseases. You will participate in the FUTURES Hub and ETlab international research community.
To Apply
This position has a two-stage selection process:
To apply for this position please submit an Expression of Interest form via the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash, within the Department of Design here: www.monash.edu/mada/future-students/graduate-research/apply.
The proposal should demonstrate an enthusiasm for the design of future health systems and services and theoretical or practice-based research into healthcare service or system design and participatory design or aligned fields. Your PhD project will be expected to contribute to co-designing the service system for Immunoglobulin Management in Australia through the OPTIMAL CRE, involving interviews, workshops, service and system design, stakeholder engagement, in collaboration with Associate Professor Heiss. Interstate work may be necessary, and will take place in Australia. You may be embedded for durations throughout your candidature in healthcare environments to conduct ethnographic and participatory research. You should also have a strong interest in translation of practice-based research into written outcomes, and will have the opportunity to collaborate on academic writing for conferences and journals.
The proposal should outline your interest in contributing through practice-based design research to the development of safer, more equitable and sustainable health futures and outline theoretical, methodological and practical approaches you are interested in pursuing in a PhD. You may also reflect your interests in engaging with new technologies and innovative approaches to the delivery of health and care outcomes.
Candidates are also asked to supply a portfolio of relevant creative work. This can showcase projects you have been involved in, both final outcomes but also process work (workshops, sketches, concept work).
Candidates who pass this stage of the selection process will be invited to discuss their ideas with the supervisory team before developing a full proposal and submitting an application.
This opportunity is available for domestic applicants only (Citizen/PR) and the duration of the scholarship is maximum 3 years 6 months.
About Monash University
Everyone needs a platform to launch a satisfying career. At Monash, we give you the space and support to take your career in all kinds of exciting new directions with access to quality research, infrastructure and learning facilities. We’re a university full of energetic and enthusiastic minds, driven to challenge what’s expected, expand what we know, and learn from other inspiring, empowering thinkers. Innovative, supportive, successful and with great breadth and depth of talent.
Monash University strongly advocates diversity, equality, fairness and openness. We fully support the gender equity principles of the Athena SWAN Charter.
Enquiries: Associate Professor Leah Heiss, leah.heiss@monash.edu
Applications Close: Monday 7 October 2024, 11:55 pm AEDT
Supporting a diverse workforce
