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PhD Internship Scheme

Overview

Our internships are aimed at current PhD students working in a quantitative discipline looking for an industrial placement of around five months with the right to work in the UK. The projects are focussed on innovation, in particular around getting the most value out of NHS data.

  • Scheme Details

    This scheme aims to connect NHS real data and issues with academic thought and research through short-term PhD internships. The benefit to the NHS is the added value that academia brings to evidence-based research but on timescales that allow the insights to be acted upon. For the student and university, the benefit is an avenue to conduct related research in an industrial environment and access to NHS data where appropriate.

    See the Scheme Overview page on the microsite for further details on the role and projects to see if this is for you

  • Applications

    Applications open on the 1st October and close on the 29th October 23:59.

    Applications need to be emailed to (jonathanpearson@nhs.net) including a CV and covering letter.

    See the "How to Apply" section og Scheme Overview for details of what to include in the covering letter and other details of the recruitment process.

  • Available Projects

    The projects often have a focus on emerging data science techniques and so we advertise mainly to data science programmes, however previous interns have come from other disciplines such as clinical, mathematics, computer science and bioinformatics, which have added huge value through the range of approaches and knowledge.

    For details on open projects see the Projects page on the microsite

  • Previous Projects

    Here you can see previous examples of the approach and outputs from our previous interns. All of our projects aim to have a public facing component with the majority having both code and technical reports published on Github if appropriate.

    Available outputs from previous projects can also be seen at Previous Projects on the microsite

Eligibility

We are looking for:

  • PhD students enrolled on a PhD course during the entire course of the internship
  • Candidates need to be able to prove a right to work in the UK for the duration of the internship

Changes this year

Unfortunately, this year we can’t offer funded places as we have done previously. We are aiming to re-establish these funded internships after NHS England has been combined with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

How this change impacts the scheme:

  • Previously our interns occupied permanent band 6 roles with full agenda for change conditions for 5-month periods. This came with a band 6 spine point 1 wage and included access to data.
    This year our interns will sign a voluntary agreement honorary contract which enables the project to go ahead, and then a separate data sharing agreement which enables access to the data. This will come with no wage and so the intern will need to be funded by their current PhD body throughout the duration of the industrial placement.

  • Previously we could only offer four internships (due to the limitation on available permanent places) – two in January and two in June. This year we have up to ten places available with five starting in January and five in April. There is flexibility on the start date and time-period going from three to five months and an opportunity to group interns if it would be beneficial to have a team work on a project together.

  • Previously we’ve been limited to applicants who are on a current PhD programme throughout the duration of the internship and have an established right to work in the UK.
    This year these constraints will still apply.

Note: we welcome applications from students on visas that restrict their weekly working hours as we are looking to match the right student to the right project which will result in an innovative and usable project which is by no means directly correlated to the number of hours available.

Questions

Please email (datascience@nhs.net) with any queries and questions. Please do not send CVs or personal data here.