Postdoc Future Healthcare: Designing Care as Collective Responsibility

Join us in shaping the future of human-centered healthcare, where patients are full members of their care team, driving engagement and seamless collaboration across settings and time.     

Job description
The shift toward patients actively participating in their care—taking responsibility for decision-making and treatment alongside their care team—is an inevitable societal transformation. Due to staff shortages, an aging population, and rising costs, patient involvement is essential to maintaining quality care. Moreover, patient engagement contributes to safer care, better therapy adherence, improved outcomes, and greater patient satisfaction. However, this role is not one that patients choose or are trained for, making engagement challenging for both patients and healthcare professionals. The design of healthcare systems—including products, services, built environments, workflows, patient journeys, and policies—plays a crucial role in shaping patient behavior and interactions with medical professionals. In other words, patient engagement is a designable phenomenon.

Key design challenges include:

• Balancing individual, team, and societal interests
• Defining functional team attributes such as shared goals, task allocation, and communication
• Structuring workflows, patient journeys, and care pathways
• Addressing teamwork dynamics and power hierarchies
• Ensuring social safety and inclusion (e.g., health literacy) for both patients and healthcare professionals
• Applying transformative design approaches in healthcare

This postdoc position is part of the new Future Healthcare program that focuses on a human-centered approach to designing healthcare systems in which patients are fully integrated team members, functioning effectively across different settings and over time.

The position builds on healthcare research within our Human-Centered Design department, including the Convergence Consultation Room 2030 initiative with Erasmus MC, led by Richard Goossens and research on patient engagement with Amsterdam UMC, led by Marijke Melles. Both initiatives encompass multiple PhD projects and collaborations, addressing key themes such as value-based healthcare, networked care, inclusion (health literacy/numeracy), and (digital) patient experience. These serve as foundational elements for this postdoc position on Care as Collective Responsibility.

Your role:

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will play a key role in establishing this new research program. Your responsibilities include:

• Preparing funding applications and carrying out research to support them.
• Publishing research outcomes in high-impact journals.
• Collaborating closely with design researchers and medical staff.

We offer a dynamic and impactful role at the intersection of healthcare and human-centered design, in close collaboration with Erasmus MC, Amsterdam UMC, and TU Delft. This position provides opportunities for professional growth across multiple domains (academia, healthcare, and design), leadership experience, and network-building in a highly interdisciplinary environment.

Job requirements

• PhD in design, medicine, health sciences, or a related field.
• Strong affinity with healthcare systems and a human-centered (design) research approach.
• Proven track record of publications and strong scientific writing skills.
• Proactive, hands-on mindset with flexibility and independence.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Proficiency in Dutch is an asset but not required.
• Highly motivated team player.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Industrial Design Engineering
Matching the evolution of people with the speed of the revolution of technology. This is the focus of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE). Delft designers act as a bridge between advances in technology and the needs of people, organisations and society to create products, services and systems with purpose.

IDE is a leader in design research across the application areas of mobility, sustainability and health, as well as its development of design tools and methods. A 350-strong research team and over 2,000 students work together in our inspiring hall, labs and studios.

In close cooperation with industry, the public sector and NGOs we rehearse possible futures in research and education to design for a complex future.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.

Conditions of employment

• Duration of contract is 2 years.
• A job of 36-40 hours per week.

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities. The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged.

For international applicants, TU Delft has the Coming to Delft Service. This service provides information for new international employees to help you prepare the relocation and to settle in the Netherlands. The Coming to Delft Service offers a Dual Career Programme for partners and they organise events to expand your (social) network.

Additional information
For more information about this vacancy, please contact Marijke Melles, m.melles@tudelft.nl.  

Application procedure
Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 31 March 2025 via the application button and upload the following documents:

• CV
• Motivational letter

Please note:

• You can apply online. We will not process applications sent by email and/or post.
• A pre-employment screening can be part of the selection procedure.
• For the final candidates, a knowledge security check will be part of the application procedure. For more information on this check, please consult Chapter 8 of the National Knowledge Security Guidelines. We carry out this check on the basis of legitimate interest.
• Please do not contact us for unsolicited services.

36 - 40 hours per week

Mekelweg 5