FULLY FUNDED Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Large Scale Complex IT Systems (LSCITS): Interfaces for Ophthalmological Health Care Personnel, sponsored my Moorfields Eye Hosptial

Applications are invited for a student to work on a research project in Interfaces For Health Care. The project is fully funded and will be completed in conjunction with studying for an EngD at the University of York. The Programme is a full time, 4-year doctoral level research degree involving both taught and research components requiring the student to work closely with a sponsoring organisation, Moorfields Eye Hospital

Moorfields Eye Hospital is one of the world’s leading eye hospitals, providing expertise in clinical care, research and teaching, and education. Their main focus is the treatment and care of NHS patients with a wide range of eye problems, from common complaints to rare conditions, which require treatments not available anywhere else in the UK. They treat people at their main hospital base in London’s City Road and at 12 other sites in and around the capital, which enables us to provide expert treatment closer to patients’ homes. Moorfields is also a postgraduate teaching centre and a national centre for ophthalmic research involving, with the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, the largest ophthalmic research programme in the world. The EngD project will be in collaboration with Moorfields consultants who have particular expertise in eye problems and interests in socio-technical software and systems engineering with emphasis on human-computer interaction and interface issues.

This project will explore how to design and implement interfaces for medical personnel to use in the diagnosis and referral of patients. Key areas of interest are how to collect requirements from ophthalmologists and other relevant personnel from different hospitals, health care trusts or even countries, all of whom, have similar skills and knowledge but differ in their practices and procedures. Emphasis will be on how to use these requirements to create interfaces that support specific roles in the health care context in a flexible way and then evolve those interfaces to better support the work of specialists in different contexts.

Outcomes for the student will include an in-depth understanding of requirements analysis techniques and modern user interface design for specialist users. The student will be exposed to other computing concepts such as role based access control, concurrency and event driven programming. Further, the student will gain insights into modern health informatics environments working with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

Applicants should be highly motivated and have a minimum of an upper second-class honours degree in Computer Science or related discipline (e.g. Electrical Engineering) with knowledge of the following:

• Requirements elicitation and analysis
• User-centred design
• Implementation of event, driven graphical user interfaces
• Familiarity with object oriented design and development
• Database query languages

Applicants will have a strong background in computer science, project-specific skills as indicated above, and good communication skills. Prior relevant commercial / industrial experience would be advantageous, e.g., working with/for the NHS.

The successful applicant will receive fees and a tax-free stipend from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EPSRC) of £16,705 p.a. Additional support to cover travel to conferences will also be available.