Clinical Research Fellow in AI – NLP / Cogstack

Job description

Job responsibilities

A consortium of NHS Trusts (Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust together with Kings College London, Guys & St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust) have set out with the support of NHSX Artificial Intelligence (AI) Award to test the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI in the clinical coding workflow. This will use a home-grown open-source platform developed in the NHS (Cogstack; https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/ai-lab/explore-all-resources/understand-ai/cogstack/). NLP-technologies is one element of the various AI-driven technologies being explored in a number of domains in the NHS. Cogstack as an open-source technology first deployed in Kings forms a core platform for enabling the use of NLP technologies. By using AI to assist in the interpreting of health records written in clinical language, health data can be processed more efficiently. Further details of the technology is available at: https://cogstack.org and https://github.com/CogStack

This project is part of a number of other data-driven health infrastructure projects are underway at Kings Health Partners including the London Medical Imaging AI Centre for Value-based Healthcare, the Centre for Translational Informatics in the NIHR Maudsley BRC, Health Data Research London and the OneLondon programme.

Role summary

The Clinical Research Fellow will work across both Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guys & St Thomas Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to support testing, validating and implementing natural language processing (NLP) solutions for processing unstructured clinical data for a variety of use-cases. While the primary use-case is in Clinical Coding, there is scope for use in other activity including clinical audit, service development, operational delivery, population health and clinical research.

The Clinical Research Fellows duties will include ensuring patient-staff engagement with the project, supervising NLP algorithm training with Clinical Coding and clinical services, and coordinating with other NHS and academic sites. Advanced software development, coding or machine learning experience are not essential as the fellow will be supported by a range of technical architects, software developers and engineers. Nonetheless, platform-independent quantitative skills would be highly desirable in this post, specifically, any skill or experience in classical statistics, large-scale data handling, scripting or using open-source software. Candidates with non-traditional background qualifications (e.g. undergraduate degree in Physics), experience (e.g. non-healthcare industry), or certifications (e.g. online data courses like DataCamp or Coursera) would also be welcomed.

This post would suit an individual interested in a career in health AI and health informatics. The postholder will have unparalleled opportunities to experience the development and deployment of AI technologies in real-world NHS scenarios, and will work with cutting-edge AI researchers and infrastructure, including the London Medical Imaging AI Centre for Value-based Healthcare, the Centre for Translational Informatics in the NIHR Maudsley BRC, and Nvidia.

Main duties and responsibilities

Patient and Staff engagement and communication

• Coordinate and run patient engagement sessions with patient and public stakeholders
• Support the design of communication material for patients and public
• Source expert patients for patient user groups
• Coordinate with patient expert groups in other partner Trusts

Supervising NLP algorithm training with Clinical Coding and clinical services, and

• Assist in annotation of diseases and language in clinical text into standardised ontologies and terminologies (e.g. SNOMED-CT, HPO and UMLS)
• Manage disease-specific or specialty-specific data requests from clinical services, to reduce duplication and over-specialisation
• Provide clinical expertise to support clinical coders mapping clinical terminologies into coded systems like ICD10

Guidance for NLP software interface development

• Provide clinician user guidance on appropriate user-interface for search functionality, annotation functionality, analytical functionality and clinical coding functionality.
• Postholder is not expected to develop new software stacks, as this will be provided by other staff.

Coordinating with other NHS and academic sites

• Coordination with clinicians at other sites for consistency of terminologies and annotations
• Coordinate with project manager at KCH and GSTT to maintain platform and data consistency of clinical systems. Postholder is not expected to be provide core project management, as this will be provided by other staff.

Clinical Duties

The cross-domain and cross-specialty uses means that candidates from most patient-facing secondary care clinical specialties would be considered. Clinical duties for direct patient care will not form a core part of the role. Infrequent stroke or neurosciences inpatient work (up to 1 week every 6 weeks) would be available to maintain clinical exposure, but clinical duties can be tailored to the individuals background and requirements. Out-of-hours clinical duties are optional and do not form part of this job.

Supervision would be provided by the Clinical Director if the post-holder has a Physician background, and specialty-specific supervision may be necessary if the post-holder is from a non-physician background.

ACADEMIC AND TRAINING FACILITIES

There are many educational opportunities within the unit including consultant-lead teaching and case-based discussions, neurology journal club, and the Friday morning Neurology CPD sessions with neuroradiology review, case presentations, and invited lectures.

In addition there are regular audit and clinical governance meetings, speciality meetings and MDTs which can be attended by SpRs for maintaining clinical experience.

Candidates on existing training programmes would be supported to apply for OOPE or OOPR permissions from their training programmes. Funding to support the individual in a post-graduate research qualification is available for 2 years, and scope to explore obtaining additional funding to extend to a full PhD programme.

Key Working Relationships

KCH

• Clinical Director of Data Science and AI
• Precision Medicine Cogstack team
• ICT Project Management Team
• Clinical Coding

GSTT

• DT&I Programme manager for AI Programmes
• DT&I Head of data policy and Cogstack team
• Clinical Scientific Computing (CSC) team
• Head of Clinical Analytics

KCL

• Precision Health Informatics and KCL Cogstack team
• School of Biomedical Engineering Sciences

External

• South London & Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre
• University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and UCL
• University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and University of Birmingham
• London Medical Imaging AI Centre for Value-based Healthcare (AI4VBH)
• Contracted commercial companies for AI4VBH

General

The post holder has a general duty of care for their own health, safety and well-being and that of work colleagues, visitors and patients within the hospital, in addition to any specific risk management or clinical governance accountabilities associated with this post.

To observe the rules, policies, procedures and standards of Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust together with all relevant statutory and professional obligations.

To observe and maintain strict confidentiality of personal information relating to patients and staff.

To be responsible, with management support, for their own personal development and to actively contribute to the development of colleagues.

This job description is intended as a guide to the general scope of duties and is not intended to be definitive or restrictive. It is expected that some of the duties will change over time and this description will be subject to review in consultation with the post holder.

All employees must hold an 'nhs.net' email account which will be the Trust's formal route for email communication. You are therefore required to check this regularly and to deal with such communication promptly.

The post holder has an important responsibility for and contribution to make to infection control and must be familiar with the infection control and hygiene requirements of this role.

These requirements are set out in the National Code of Practice on Infection Control and in local policies and procedures which will be made clear during your induction and subsequent refresher training. These standards must be strictly complied with at all times.

This job description is intended as a guide to the general scope of duties and is not intended to be definitive or restrictive. It is expected that some of the duties will change over time and this description will be subject to review in consultation with the post holders.

Person Specification

Education/ Qualifications

Essential

• Eligible for registration with the GMC
• MBBS or equivalent degree

Desirable

• Preference will be given to a candidate who has passed the MRCP or equivalent (CV).
• PhD, MD (original research) (CV)

Previous Experience

Essential

• Proof of CMT/IMT-level experience competency (This job is suitable for candidates who wish to apply for an ST3 post)
• Previous presentations or posters at regional or national level

Desirable

• ALS (or equivalent) within 2 years (CV)
• Registrar-level experience (StR experience or higher) (CV, I)
• Technical experience quantitative sciences, statistics or mathematics at undergraduate-level or higher. (CV, I)
• Research experience or publications (non-case-report) (CV, I)

Skills/ Knowledge/ Ability

Essential

• Good standard of written and spoken English to facilitate communication with patients, healthcare professionals and other staff
• Clear, logical thinking showing an analytical/scientific approach
• Ability to prioritise clinical need
• Ability to organise oneself & own work
• Evidence of participation and active involvement in an audit project
• Experience and ability to work in multi-professional teams
• Understanding of clinical risk management
• High command of written and spoken English; ability to build rapport, listen, persuade, negotiate and to handle linguistic tasks
• Able to change and adapt, respond to rapidly changing circumstances
• Able to operate under pressure, cope with setbacks, self-aware
• Is well prepared, shows self- discipline/ commitment, is punctual and meets deadlines
• Displays honesty, integrity, aware of ethical dilemmas, respects confidentiality
• Evidence of teaching experience; involvement in organised teaching

Desirable

• Evidence of excellence in training (e.g. medical school projects & prizes, post- graduate qualifications) (CV)
• Technical proficiency in scripting in any scripting language (CV, I)
• Technical proficiency with open-source development and deployment tools (e.g. Git repositories, Docker and command-line tools) (CV, I)
• Shows initiative / drive / enthusiasm (self-starter, motivated, shows curiosity, initiative) (I)
• Ability to communicate in simple lay language with patients and public on the use of data and appropriate privacy safeguards (I)
• Good grasp of information governance and research governance (I)

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Address

King's College Hospital

Denmark Hill

London

SE5 9RS

Employer's website

https://www.kch.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)