You will be participating in a large European consortium consisting of clinical experts from various academic hospitals, large companies developing AI-based assistive technologies, European radiology and minimal invasive therapy, and small companies with specific expertise like in human-machine interaction. This is a European HORIZON project named SHERPA: Smart human-centred effortless support for professional clinical applications.

The aim of the SHERPA project is to empower clinical experts, such as interventional radiologists and oncologists, when performing complex, high-risk interventions. AI-powered assistive technologies may help this empowerment and can become a trusted companion (a ‘sherpa’) in their workflow by making the clinical procedures less demanding for the clinician, streamline the patient and physician workflow, shorten learning curves, improve patients’ outcomes, and reduce costs.     

Of course, these AI-powered technologies require careful evaluation. Currently, there is substantial uncertainty and different views on what is the optimal way of evaluating such technologies. For example, which types of clinical studies need to be performed, which study designs to use, which types of outcomes (physician or patient or process oriented or costs or a combination)  in order to convince the various stakeholders about the value of AI based technologies. These stakeholders include hospital directors as potential buyers of such innovations, clinical experts using the innovations, patients undergoing the innovations, regulatory bodies and insurance companies to decide on their reimbursement.

You will participate in developing a framework to guide the evaluation and assessment of different types of AI-powered assistive technologies. Key activities in your PhD will be: (i) reviewing existing frameworks for other types of medical (technology) innovations; (ii) performing semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders on the challenges of evaluating AI-assistive interventions and requirements for the evaluation framework; (iii) developing the framework within the consortium; (iv) contributing to 7 clinical studies in the SHERPA project each aimed at evaluating a specific AI-technology.

Department of Epidemiology and Health Economics

In this position, you will work and be supervised in the Department of Epidemiology and Health Economics of the Julius Center at the UMC Utrecht. You will be located in the Methodology team; in this team we evaluate and develop new research methods and guidelines for the evaluation of different types of innovations. You will be part of an energetic, enthusiastic team of more than 30 colleagues from different backgrounds. The Julius Center has an extensive national and international network.

You have a keen interest in high-tech, AI-based innovations in healthcare and how they might lead to benefits for patients, healthcare professionals, or healthcare in general. You have an interest in the different methods on how to evaluate medical technology innovations. You need to be able to work in a diverse environment where different views exist. You need to incorporate these views and be able to highlight where differences arise

Applicants for this position should have a relevant MSc. For example, in (clinical) epidemiology, biomedical or health sciences, or applied data sciences or applied artificial intelligence. Fluency in written and spoken English is required, and fluency in Dutch is an advantage.

• A salary between € 3017 and € 3824 gross per month (salary scale <invullen>), based on full-time employment (36 hours). 
• Salary increase of 3% from July 2025, according to the collective labor agreement (cao). 
• Year-end bonus of 8.3% and holiday allowance of 8%. 
• Pension insurance with ABP. We take care of approximately 70% of the monthly contribution. 
• 100% public transport reimbursement. Are you coming on foot, by bike or by car? You will then receive a reimbursement of € 0.18 per km (by car up to a max. of 40 km one way). 
• Possibilities to develop yourself personally and professionally. 
• The option to select additional employment benefits in exchange for gross salary, such as purchasing a bicycle and memberships.