DiaLink Palestine: R&D of a digital health lab and low-bandwidth mHealth tools

DiaLink Palestine: R&D of a digital health lab and low-bandwidth mHealth tools

The doctoral researcher will be hosted at KU Leuven’s Group T Leuven Campus in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research unit. The unit develops user-centred interactive systems and investigates how people interact with information through methods including user experience design, visualisation, multimedia, language technologies and machine learning. The researcher will work closely with the eMedia Research Lab and the Leuven Centre for Affordable Health Technology (LCAHT), creating an interdisciplinary setting that connects HCI, digital media, biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence and global health.
Anchored at PPU's College of Medicine and Health Sciences and the human-computer interaction research unit, the project will establish a Digital Health Living Lab and co-create an inclusive, low-bandwidth mHealth tool, an explainable clinical decision support system, and blended patient/clinician/community health-worker pathways. The work combines human-computer interaction, digital health, implementation research, clinical data and equity-centred evaluation. The candidate will be embedded at PPU-CMHS and jointly supervised by PPU and KU Leuven professors. The trajectory includes approved research periods in Belgium and locally in Palestine. Remote/hybrid alternatives may be used when mobility is infeasible because of visa, security or travel conditions, subject to the applicable scholarship and institutional rules.

DiaLink Palestine addresses disrupted continuity of Type 2 Diabetes care in conflict-affected Palestinian settings. Anchored at PPU's College of Medicine and Health Sciences, the project will establish a Digital Health Living Lab and co-create an inclusive, low-bandwidth mHealth tool, an explainable clinical decision support system, and blended patient/clinician/community health-worker pathways. The work combines human-computer interaction, digital health, implementation research, clinical data and equity-centred evaluation.

Profile

The successful candidate will help connect the Digital Health Living Lab, pilot sites and the joint PPU–KU Leuven research programme. The PhD has a clear engineering focus: developing and evaluating human-centred interactive systems for conflict-resilient diabetes care. The exact doctoral proposal will be refined with the supervisors and doctoral school within the approved DiaLink outcomes.

• Study how conflict, connectivity constraints, health literacy, gender, disability, geography and care workflows shape equitable digital diabetes care.
• Design, implement and evaluate human-centred, offline-first interactive systems that integrate optimization algorithms, machine learning, explainable AI and interactive visual interfaces, enabling patients and healthcare professionals to understand, steer and collaborate with AI-supported decision tools.
• Support baseline, implementation and mixed-methods evaluation; manage reproducible, secure research workflows.
• Assess usability, trust, adoption, continuity-of-care and equity outcomes, including subgroup differences and unintended burdens.
• Contribute to ethics, privacy-by-design, data governance, algorithm safety, open/reusable project outputs, publications and uptake materials.
• Contribute to PPU capacity strengthening, teaching, supervision, stakeholder learning and the National Diabetes Digital Toolkit.
• A master's degree, completed by the appointment/admission deadline, in engineering, engineering technology, computer science, computer engineering, artificial intelligence, data science, human-computer interaction, biomedical engineering, information systems or a closely related technical discipline that clearly demonstrates engineering capability.
• Academic results that satisfy KU Leuven's doctoral admission requirements: normally a relevant master's degree obtained with at least distinction, or an internationally equivalent result, unless the candidate has otherwise distinguished themselves through high-quality scientific publications or design-oriented achievements.
• Demonstrated strong Python programming and practical experience with Git/version control, databases, mobile prototyping and relevant AI/XAI libraries (for example, scikit-learn, PyTorch or TensorFlow, and SHAP or LIME, or equivalents), supported by a thesis, code repository, software prototype or comparable technical work.
• Strong research potential and ability to work across clinical, technical and community settings.
• Strong spoken and written English. Arabic proficiency is required for direct field engagement or must be covered through an approved fieldwork arrangement.
• Ability and willingness to undertake the planned Belgium research periods, while recognising that travel remains subject to visa and security feasibility.

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