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Research Officer -Technologies and Hospital Care (Health Systems / Services Research)

Reference Number: 
RO-THC-8-04-2024
Employment Type: 
Full time
Category: 
Health Research
Job Grade: 
7.01
Country: 
Kenya
Location: 
Nairobi
JOB PURPOSE: 

We have an exciting opportunity for someone to contribute to research at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), a leading research centre in Africa dedicated to investigating the primary causes of ill health and the development of health care systems on the continent. At KWTRP, we are not only committed to advancing scientific knowledge but also to fostering local research leadership.

In a new project, the Health Services Unit at KWTRP Nairobi together with the Kenya Paediatric Research Consortium (KEPRECON) are collaborating with researchers at Oxford University and elsewhere to advance work to examine which technologies are being introduced in Kenya’s hospitals with a particular focus on its County Hospitals. The World Health Organisation has recently provided a classification of Digital Health technologies (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240081949)  and our team is especially interested in those that aim to support health care providers in their work. We are interested in which are being introduced or are emerging and how these are influencing / will influence service delivery and health worker roles / role redesign or the sharing of tasks between different professional groups. Technologies may change health workers roles, amongst many other ways, by:

  • Extending the scope of (new) services available to patients (eg. new diagnostics or decision support tools may result in new therapeutic strategies being provided in FRH)
  •  Enabling new forms of shared care for complex conditions (eg. through expert supervision using telehealth)
  • Simplifying or standardising processes of care (eg. those that have enabled different professionals to have roles in provision of anaesthesia )

Understanding the effects of technologies on roles and their redesign is especially important in African hospitals as these settings traditionally had very few highly skilled, specialist providers, with most care being provided by generally trained staff, and many countries have a long history of task-sharing between professions in hospitals that include clinical officers, nurses, pharmacists and others. Furthermore, Kenyan and African hospitals often have major overall workforce deficits, so ambitions to extend the scope or scale of services offered driven by technologies my further stretch an already compromised workforce. As well as exploring how technologies may (aim to) change work it is also therefore important that the existing context is understood.

This new Research Officer position is initially offered for a 1-year period, with the potential for renewal, during which the post-holder will:

  • Explore the policy and strategy context that is guiding technology introduction in Kenya, SA, Uganda and the wider African technology policy ecosystem?
  • Examine what health care provider focused technologies (diagnostics and digital health) are currently in use in Kenyan hospitals and how widespread is their adoption
  •  Undertake scoping literature reviews to summarise findings of studies on provider focused technologies and their effects on quality of care and workforce roles in LMIC
  • Contribute to horizon scanning of emerging technologies likely to impact county hospitals?
  • Contribute to development of longer term work to track exemplar technologies and their effects on health care delivery in county hospitals

The new Research Officer position will be within the Health Services Unit of the KWTRP in Nairobi and will be supervised in Kenya by Dr. J. Oliwa. Additional scientific advice will be provided by Dr. Chris Paton and Prof. Mike English who are based in Oxford. The Research Officer will also join a wider research team termed Africa’s First Referral Hospitals: Innovation and Care (AFRHiCARE) Partnership that seeks to understand the current and future roles of county hospitals in Kenya and District Hospitals in Uganda and South Africa. The AFHRiCARE Partnership is a collaborative effort between well-established researchers from KWTRP's Population and Health and Health Services Units and the Universities of Oxford, Witwatersrand, and Makerere. AFHRiCARE is funded by Wellcome to generate new evidence that will inform the roles, workforce requirements, skill-mix, and use of technologies needed to deliver high-quality healthcare as part of Universal Health Coverage.

We welcome applications from those wishing to develop their skills and a career in health services research or in health systems planning and who wish to make a meaningful impact on healthcare in Africa as part of a dynamic research environment in Kenya that is linked to a wider network of scientific excellence.

Research Officer - Evaluating Hospital Performance (Health Systems / Services Research)

Reference Number: 
RO-EHP-8-04-2024
Employment Type: 
Full time
Category: 
Health Research
Job Grade: 
7.01
Country: 
Kenya
Location: 
Nairobi
JOB PURPOSE: 

We have an exciting opportunity for someone to contribute to research at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP), a leading research centre in Africa dedicated to investigating the primary causes of ill health and the development of health care systems on the continent. At KWTRP, we are not only committed to advancing scientific knowledge but also to fostering local research leadership.

In a new project, the Health Services Unit at KWTRP Nairobi together with the Kenya Paediatric Research Consortium (KEPRECON) are collaborating with researchers at Oxford University and elsewhere to advance work on approaches to assessment of Hospital Performance with a focus on  Kenya’s hospitals especially its County Hospitals. The OECD utilises a range of approaches to assess hospital performance , The World Health Organisation offers ideas on health system performance assessment , quality of care in general  and more specific sets of indicators for maternal, neonatal and child health.    Some African countries provide detailed information on hospital inputs (staffing and resources), workloads and outcomes and some of these may be assessed in intermittent surveys (such as the Service Availability and Readiness Assessments).  We are interested in which assessments (measurements, indicators) are proposed for county level hospitals in Kenya, which are actually used and which might different stakeholders prioritise. Work in Kenya may complement or even extend to partner countries in Uganda and South Africa.

The Research Officer would therefore:

  • Examine relevant global, regional and national frameworks used to conceptualise or organise hospital performance assessment.
  • Identify highly prioritised measures and define specific indicators of hospital performance, focusing on non-tertiary hospitals.
  • Examine which hospital performance measures are employed in Kenya spanning inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes (where outputs include volume and variety of health services provided).
  • Collate and analyse available data for Kenyan County Hospitals on their health workforce complement and key performance measures including an examination of the volume and variety of health services provided for each county hospital.
  • Produce reports that summarise the findings of these document / literature reviews and the results of secondary data analyses on hospital performance.

The new Research Officer position will be within the Health Services Unit of the KWTRP in Nairobi and will be supervised in Kenya by Dr. J. Oliwa with support from Dr. Tim Tuti. Additional scientific advice will be provided by Dr. Attakrit Leckcivilize and Prof. Mike English who are based in Oxford. The Research Officer will also join a wider research team termed Africa’s First Referral Hospitals: Innovation and Care (AFRHiCARE) Partnership that seeks to understand the current and future roles of county hospitals in Kenya and District Hospitals in Uganda and South Africa. The AFHRiCARE Partnership is a collaborative effort between well-established researchers from KWTRP's Population and Health and Health Services Units and the Universities of Oxford, Witwatersrand, and Makerere. AFHRiCARE is funded by Wellcome to generate new evidence that will inform the roles, workforce requirements, skill-mix, and use of technologies needed to deliver high-quality healthcare as part of Universal Health Coverage.

We welcome applications from those wishing to develop their skills and a career in health services research or in health systems planning and who wish to make a meaningful impact on healthcare in Africa as part of a dynamic research environment in Kenya that is linked to a wider network of scientific excellence.