PhD position on fairness of NLP-supported clinical decision-making process in healthcare

We are hiring a Ph.D. student who will join the Human Data Science https://hds.sites.uu.nl/ and NLP https://nlp.sites.uu.nl/ groups of the Methodology and Statistics department of Utrecht University. Please visit the vacancy at: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-on-...

*Project description*

Text mining and Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems are proving very useful for clinical care and research. Several decisions on patient inclusion/exclusion and coding of key study variables in clinical studies are taken out of the hands of clinicians and put into the care of NLP systems. However, clinical care is not always equitable; for example, women present very different stroke symptoms from men, leading to underdiagnosis and undertreatment of female stroke victims. These inequities are inevitably encoded in the electronic health records (EHR) corpora mined by clinical data scientists.

*The aim of this project *is to study the extent to which existing healthcare inequities are propagated by the application of text mining/NLP to EHR records and to develop methods to assess and reduce the impact of the encoded inequities.

This project is part of the Gravitation programme Public Values in the Algorithmic Society https://www.nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/gravitation(ALGOSOC). The Gravitation programme is an initiative by the Dutch government to support excellent research in the Netherlands. The funding is reserved for scientific consortia that have the potential to rank among the world's best in their field. ALGOSOC is a response to the urgent need for an informed societal perspective on automated decision-making. Funded by the ministry for Education, Culture and Science for a period for 10 years, research in the ALGOSOC programme will develop a deep understanding of the systemic changes that automated decision making entails for core public institutions, for society, and for how public values are realized. The research will focus on three sectors: justice, health and media. The programme brings together researchers in law, communication science, computer science, media studies, philosophy, public governance, STS, economy and social sciences from five Dutch universities (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Tilburg, Delft and Rotterdam). Together, the ALGOSOC community will develop solutions for the design of governance frameworks needed to complement technology-driven initiatives in the algorithmic society.

*What are you going to do*

*Tasks and responsibilities*

- Develop, conduct, and publish research on the field of clinical NLP and data science; - Active participation in the research teams of the UU M&S department https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/methodology-and-statistics and especially in the groups of Human Data Science https://hds.sites.uu.nl/ and NLP https://nlp.sites.uu.nl/; - Contribute to the public debate and organise outreach activities of ALGOSOC; - Contribute to the overall program in terms of events, research meetings, activities; - Collaborate with other researchers within the ALGOSOC consortium; - Help co-supervising research projects of students working on related topics.

*What do we require*

- A Master degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related field with interest in medical applications, *or*; - A Master degree in technical medicine or similar and experience in NLP; - A background in machine learning and deep learning is a plus; - Strong programming skills; - An excellent written and spoken command of English, as demonstrated by publications in English-language journals (written and spoken command of other languages, including French, German and/or Dutch is a plus); - The ability, willingness, and commitment to do both autonomous and team work; - Experience with organising workshops, lecture series, and similar events;

*Our offer*

The vacancy is for 1.0 FTE for 4 years. The appointment is initially for one year, starting in 2023, with a possibility of extension after a positive evaluation. The appointment should lead to the completion of a dissertation within four years. The salary ranges full-time from €2,541 to €3,247 gross per month (salary scale P, in accordance with the CAO Dutch Universities). The salary is supplemented with an annual vacation allowance of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3%.

*Questions*

Do you have any questions or do you require additional information? Please contact: • Dr. Anastasia Giachanou (a.giachanou@uu.nl), Assistant Professor

*Job application*

If you feel the profile fits you, and you are interested in the job, we look forward to receiving your application. You can apply online on the university’s vacancy page: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-on-...

We will accept applications until *16 January 2023*

For information on other vacancies of ALGOSOC project, go to https://www.algosocvacancies.org/ https://www.algosocvacancies.org/

Best regards, Anastasia Giachanou