Clinical Research Fellow in Cardiac Electrophysiology & Imaging - Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

Clinical Research Fellow in Cardiac Electrophysiology & Imaging - Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

About Us

The successful applicant will be located with the newly created Research Department of Digital Twins (North Wing of St Thomas’ Hospital), primarily supervised by Dr John Whitaker. The post will benefit from the computational and clinical electrophysiological infrastructure provided by the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences and will be based at St Thomas’ Hospital.

This work will be performed in close collaboration with the clinical researchers at KCL and St Thomas’ Hospital, lead by Dr John Whitaker and Prof Aldo Rinaldi, along with the biomedical engineering team, lead by Dr Martin Bishop.

About The Role

Catheter ablation therapy involves ‘burning’ small areas of cardiac tissue in order to permanently disrupt the problematic electrical pathways driving potentially lethal arrhythmias. However, procedure times and complication rates are high, whilst success rates are punitively low (~50% success), largely due to the significant challenges clinicians face in identifying the ideal ‘target’ to ablate. Here, we aim to further develop, clinically validate, and prospectively evaluate, a novel in-silico tool that uses patient imaging data to reconstruct personalised ‘digital twin’ cardiac models to provide pre-procedural ablation target guidance. This will provide essential confidence and data to guide a follow-up prospective randomised clinical trial. In this project, funded by a British Heart Foundation Programme Grant, we will collect clinical imaging and electrical data from VT ablation patients to validate and refine our computational technology to create a software as a medical device, ready for clinical evaluation. We will then conduct a clinical study in which the tool will be prospectively deployed to evaluate its performance in enhancing patient therapy.

This is a full time post (40 Hours per week), and you will be offered a fixed term contract for 3 years.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.