EPSRC Industrial CASE PhD Studentship (3 years) Aston University
EPSRC Industrial CASE PhD Studentship (3 years)
Retrieving online biomedical evidence to support point of care decision making
Aston University – School Of Engineering And Applied Science
Applications are invited for a three year PhD studentship, supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to be undertaken at Aston University. The successful applicant will join an established group working on information retrieval methodologies for evidence-based medicine. The studentship is offered in collaboration with Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
The position is available to start in March 2010 (subject to negotiation)
Financial Support
Will be provided to Home/EU students (subject to eligibility) at the standard EPSRC rate of £13,290 with the corresponding standard EPSRC increases in subsequent years plus a £3,000 per year award from the collaborating company.
Background of the Project
Physicians should be able to apply evidence gained from scientific research to manage patients as part of clinical practice. However, many factors complicate the retrieval of evidence and repositories that could be leveraged for point of care support are currently vastly underexploited.
Aims: We propose a framework for indexing, retrieving and presenting evidence-based documents from online medical literature. The research will be conducted in the mental health domain and will be integrated with GRiST, a mental health risk assessment tool developed at Aston University. The resulting application will undergo a live clinical trial at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The main objectives of the work program are to:
- Address the problem of coarsely grained indexing schemes and develop a methodology for applying more fine-grained and patient-specific descriptors to evidence-based documents.
- Develop an enhanced querying mechanism for evidence-based documents that uses the patient-specific concepts and vector-based methodologies from information retrieval.
- Implement a presentation model that abstracts relevant documents in a manner for enhanced visualization at the point of care.
- Fully integrate the framework with the GRiST tool and perform an evaluation of the prototype framework at a live participating clinical site.
Outcomes: A clinical decision support system that can be used at the point of care to provide patient-specific evidence-based recommendations. The research will help develop innovative ways of implementing evidence-based medicine in practice, making otherwise inaccessible information readily available through IT in a novel way.
Person Specification
The successful applicant should have a first class or upper second class honours degree or equivalent in a computer science related subject. Preferred skills include knowledge/experience of information retrieval and ontological engineering. Applicants should fulfil the eligibility criteria for EPSRC funding through UK nationality and/or residency status (see ).
For informal enquiries, please contact Dr Dympna O’Sullivan by email (d.m.osullivan@aston.ac.uk)
Application forms, reference forms and details of entry requirements, including English language are available at
Please send your completed application form with at least two academic references and a full CV to:
Dr Dympna O’Sullivan
Lecturer in Computer Science
Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK.
Closing Date: 26 February 2010
Ref No R090383
Filed Under: Aston University • Computer Science
