Postdoctoral Scholar, Digital Health - University of Alberta, Edmonton

AI Summary

This Postdoctoral Scholar position at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, focuses on leading research into digital health interventions. The role involves evaluating, implementing, and optimizing technology-enabled care pathways for chronic disease and pre-operative patients. Key requirements include a recent PhD in a health-related field and experience with digital health interventions and data analysis. This opportunity offers significant research and career development in a leading Canadian university.

About the Role

The Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta is seeking a dedicated Postdoctoral Scholar to join an innovative interdisciplinary research program. This program is specifically designed to advance technology-enabled models of care for individuals managing chronic disease and those preparing for major medical procedures. Working within a collaborative team, the Postdoctoral Scholar will play a crucial role in the evaluation, implementation, and ongoing optimization of personalized digital and hybrid care pathways, particularly within cardiac rehabilitation and prehabilitation. This position emphasizes enhancing user experience, fostering engagement, and leveraging wearable technology for assessment, ensuring real-world deployment within existing clinical workflows. This offers robust opportunities for first-author publications, grant writing, student mentorship, and career development, making it ideal for those pursuing academic or health-system research careers in digital health, rehabilitation science, or implementation science. The University of Alberta is committed to fostering a vibrant research environment.

Key Responsibilities

As a Postdoctoral Scholar, you will lead impactful research focused on the evaluation and implementation of personalized digital health interventions, utilizing behaviour change and implementation science frameworks. A significant part of your role will involve examining user experience, engagement, and adherence among both patients and clinicians participating in digital health interventions across diverse clinical populations, including prehabilitation, cardiac rehabilitation, and other chronic disease self-management programs. You will analyze wearable-derived data, such as physical activity, sleep, and heart rate, in conjunction with survey and clinical data to characterize functional recovery, frailty, and engagement patterns over time. Furthermore, you will conduct usability testing and mixed-methods evaluations, including surveys, interviews, and engagement analytics, to inform the optimization of these digital health interventions. Coordinating clinical and implementation studies, managing ethics submissions, developing protocols, overseeing trial logistics, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration are also core responsibilities. This role requires you to lead quantitative and/or mixed-methods analyses and contribute significantly to first-author manuscripts, conference presentations, and grant applications. Mentoring graduate students and contributing to lab-wide research, training, and knowledge-translation activities are also expected.

Qualifications and Experience

Candidates for this Postdoctoral Scholar position must possess a PhD completed within the last five years, or be near completion, in a relevant field such as Health Sciences, Rehabilitation Sciences, Kinesiology, Cardiac Sciences, Public Health, Health Informatics, or Nursing. Essential experience includes working with digital or technology-enabled health interventions, such as tele-rehabilitation, remote monitoring, or mobile health. Proficiency in using REDCap for data capture, survey design, and workflow tracking is required. Strong quantitative data analysis skills, utilizing tools like R, Python, or SPSS, are crucial, particularly with clinical or behavioural datasets. The role also demands proficiency in qualitative research methods, including interviews, focus groups, and thematic analysis. A demonstrated ability to produce peer-reviewed publications is expected, alongside strong communication, organizational, and collaborative skills. Experience in Implementation Science is considered a valuable asset for this role at the University of Alberta. This position is in-person at the North Campus Edmonton, Alberta.