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25 Mar 2021

PhD opportunity – Care homes and digital technology

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Starting April 2021 or September 2021 for three years, full time.

This PhD opportunity is linked to our multi-morbidity, ageing and frailty theme and is based at Newcastle University.

Our doctoral fellows are distributed across themes and universities and are a crucial part of our capacity building strategy.

More about the PhD

Care home residents are some of the most complex, and vulnerable NHS patients, but research on their health and wellbeing has been limited by the dearth of routinely available data. In the North East, great progress has been made in digital collection of information in care homes to link to other health and social care data sources.

This PhD will use statistical methods and other quantitative approaches to explore the potential of digital technologies to facilitate data collection and analyses to optimise the health and care of residents. Analysis of routine (real world) data on care home residents will be used to answer questions of local relevance, that are also of national importance, providing decision support for best practice and guiding policy change. Questions could include, for example – how do health care inputs and resident outcomes vary with socioeconomic background, and what is the role of digital connectivity? Or, what pattern of community nursing support is needed to optimise resident outcomes, and does digital connectivity make a difference?

There will be a strong focus on socioeconomic inequalities and the consequences of COVID-19 for the sector.

This work will align with ongoing work in the region, to digitally connect care homes with health and social care data, and a national study to develop a minimum dataset for care homes. The successful candidate will have a strong interest in both developing skills in quantitative analysis and applying them to challenges identified in health and social care.

Find out more and apply.

Closing date Tuesday 30 March 2021.