As a PhD Candidate, you will conduct ethical-empirical research into the conditions for trust in medical algorithms. You will write a PhD thesis (based on scientific publications) and follow courses at the Graduate School of Life Sciences and/or Philosophy; you will also teach Medical Ethics and Medical Humanities courses at the Faculty of Medicine.

The increasing availability of various sorts of digital clinical data and developments in medical AI have great potential to advance clinical decision-making. Yet, implementation of medical AI is paired with sociological and ethical concerns.

In their interactions with these new technologies, medical experts will have to critically consider when medical AI should be followed in clinical decision-making and when they should be disregarded. In other words: when should health care experts (dis)trust the advice of medical AI? Medical AI will only be able to benefit medical care if health care experts are able to find the balance between reasonable trust and reasonable skepticism.

This project will ethically evaluate the conditions for trusting the advice of medical AI in clinical decision-making. Detailed ethical analyses will be conducted to scrutinize and refine central concepts in AI-augmented medicine. Empirical qualitative approaches of pediatric case studies will identify considerations of trust in the outcomes of medical AI. The outcomes of these investigations will form the basis for a theoretically profound and empirically informed framework for the conditions for trust in medical AI.

You will work at the Department of Medical Humanities of the Julius Center at the University Medical Center Utrecht and will collaborate with clinicians and academics both within and outside the UMC Utrecht. Supervisors of this project will be Dr. Karin Jongsma (bioethics) and Prof.Dr. Manon Benders (neonatology). This project will be conducted in collaboration with other colleagues from the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital.

You have a master degree in (bio)ethics, philosophy, health sciences, medical sociology, medical anthropology or science and technology studies. You are interested in the ethics of medical innovation and about working at the crossroads of ethics and medicine. You are both able to conduct academic ethics research, and to describe and reflect on the way digital technologies affect clinical practice. Experience with qualitative research methods.

You are highly self-motivated, willing to work in an interdisciplinary team and also able to work independently.

The maximum salary for this position (36 hours) is € 3.271 gross per month based on full-time employment.

In addition, we offer an annual benefit of 8.3%, holiday allowance, travel expenses and career opportunities. The terms of employment are in accordance with the Cao University Medical Centers (UMC).

Department

Our interdisciplinary department is comprised of medical professionals, professors, associate and assistant professors and PhD students working on a variety of topics in the intersecting fields of medical ethics, innovation of biotechnology, history of medicine, narrative medicine and health law. As an embedded member of our department you will also be involved with shared activities pertaining to teaching, research and professional training.