Do you want to have an impact in healthcare and improve access, quality, availability, and sustainability of cancer services? Are you focussed on data-driven research? Do you want to be a part of a leading European School in Health Policy and Management, then we might have an opportunity for you. As a multidisciplinary institute, Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM) internationally has a strong presence in health economics, health services & health systems research, healthcare governance, and health insurance. Together with Erasmus Medical Centre (Erasmus MC), ESHPM develops a dedicated program of work utilising data to analyse and improve care delivery. For the upcoming 4 years funding for this program is available through the Dutch Ministry of Education and Research (OCW) in the strategic Sector plan “Medical and Health Sciences”. Attracting additional funding after 4 years is an important task.
To deliver on the challenges in healthcare, ESHPM has defined a strategic agenda that envisions significant investments in data enabling research infrastructure. In addition to investments in data infrastructure and data analytic capacity, and utilising the funding mentioned above, is now also recruiting for a new:
Associate Professor “Organisation of Cancer Services” (1 FTE) Cancer remains one of the most impactful conditions causing significant mortality and morbidity. Timely diagnosis facilitates early treatment and thus patient outcomes. At the same time, treatments become increasingly complex and expensive, and the societal costs associated with treatment, mortality and morbidity are substantial. Because of the complexity of care and the need for specialized hospitals delivering treatment, minimum volume standards are in place and comprehensive cancer networks are formed to enable easy access as well as early referral to specialized treatment. The development and monitoring of quality cancer networks largely depend on granular data, consensus based clinical care pathways, multi-institutional collaboration and appropriate governance and funding.
Until now, clinical, economic and implementation constraints are leading in policy decisions to accredit hospital networks and to implement (precision) cancer treatments. However, a focus on how to best organize care, including equitable access, is a topic of debate and not free from organizational, patient and professional’s interests and preferences. Following the (higher) minimum volume standards, as determined by the involved medical societies, this increasingly concerns decisions about what specialised surgeries and/or treatments to be provided by which hospitals taking into account both the accessibility, quality, availability, and sustainability of cancer services. Therefore, a strong data driven program pulling data sources from registries including comprehensive cancer networks and data from Statistics Netherlands aims to provide the necessary evidence to support these decisions.
Through this position, ESHPM aims to improve the quality of cancer care and the availability of (precision) oncology treatments with a focus on (i)
equity and
access to cancer services and (ii) the impact of
centralization and the
organization of cancer networks including volume arrangements. Both with special interest in the diagnostic pathway (e.g., early detection and risk stratification) and the sustainability of (expensive) complex cancer treatments like genomic sequencing, surgical procedures and/or gene and immunotherapies. Through this data intensive program, the aim is to improve health outcomes achieved in a sustainable way, typically by analysing (hypothetical) volume and complexity of care scenarios on costs of treatment, travel time, carbon footprint, equity in access to services, patient outcomes, productivity and hospital workload will be examined for selected types of cancer. These results can be used to guide complex health policy decisions about sustainable cancer care.
ESHPM is recognised to deliver on these topics, particularly from three distinct research teams. The Health Technology Assessment section (HTA) particularly focusses on access, affordability and sustainability of treatments, the Health Systems and Insurance section (HSI) is world-leading in the economics & financing of health care systems – including the role of market organisation, payment models and econometric methods to analyse the efficient organisation of health care and health insurance – and the Health Services Management & Organisation section (HSMO) is specialised in networks of care and value-based healthcare. The new Associate Professor will be primarily embedded in the HSI section, yet with extensive outreach to the other ESHPM sections (HTA and HSMO) as well as Erasmus MC Cancer Centre.
Job description We are recruiting an Associate Professor who will develop a strong data-driven research program utilising existing data sources (like the Dutch national cancer registry). The work will be both applied (informing policy) as well as methodological (data analytics). Importantly, the candidate is expected to make impact and have an active role in both the Dutch and international health policy debate around comprehensive cancer networks. Furthermore, we expect the candidate to:
- develop a vision for a research program including funding opportunities to be financially sustainable after 4 years;
- have extensive experience with data intensive research, particularly also with advanced data analytic techniques for observational data
- Extensive experience with software (e.g., R, Python, Stata);
- provide leadership for the program and to the staff and students who are involved;
- collaborate with academic staff in departments sharing an interest in cancer research;
- connect disciplines within ESHPM and serve as a go-to person for external collaborators;
- contributing to existing educational activities and development of new courses and teaching programs;
- generate impact and engagement aligned with the Erasmian Values.