Job Description

Job Title: Head of Education and Associate Director of the MSc in Design and
Healthcare, Helix Centre
Department/Division/Faculty: Helix Centre, WS - Department of Surgery & Cancer
Campus/Location: St Mary’s Hospital
Job Family/Level: Professional Services Level 5 (Salary scales)
Responsible to: Helix Managing Director
Key Working Relationships Helix Centre Designers, IGHI Teaching Fellows, IGHI Director of
(Internal): Operations for Education, Programme Directors, Academics,
Department Education Manager
Key Working Relationships NHS England, Royal College of Art, non-Imperial Academics,
(External): Corporate clients, Professional certification or education provision
bodies
Contract type: Full time and fixed term for 24 months
Purpose of the Post

The Helix Centre works to make health and healthcare better by putting people and their needs at the
centre of what we do. We design and evaluate products and services that tackle healthcare challenges
and a strong part of our impact comes from educating others in our methods.

Founded by the Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, and based at St Mary’s Hospital
in Paddington, we bring a unique interdisciplinary approach to applying design to health and
healthcare.

We are seeking a motivated and dynamic individual with experience of applying design methodologies
in a health or healthcare context to lead our work in Education, including the design and delivery of:

• Specific modules on the MSc / MRes in Healthcare and Design, in collaboration with the Royal
College of Art, an exciting 2-year part-time postgraduate course delivered both in-person and online
to students from both Imperial College and the RCA
• The “Design for Digital Transformation” module within the Institute for Global Health Innovation’s
Digital Health Leadership programmes (MSc, PG Dip and PG Cert). These flagship programmes of
the NHS Digital Academy aim to nurture the next generation of networked informatics leaders
across clinical and non-clinical roles in the NHS. To date, the programme has trained over 500
leaders through online and residential learning
• Future education offers from the Helix Centre, including development of bespoke corporate training,
online short-courses, in-person bootcamps
• Documentation of the range of methods we apply at Helix to serve as shareable toolkits and best-
practice guides for both internal and external use

The post-holder will have the ability and seniority to manage a dynamic portfolio, whilst also able to
work independently and with others to deliver educational offers that reflect the latest methods and
tools from human-centred design and inclusive design applied to healthcare. They will have the ability
to handle complex and dynamic situations including:

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 • Managing a portfolio of established education offers in collaboration with Helix Centre Designers,
Teaching and Academic Fellows and Course Directors
• The need to continuously improve and develop the programmes
• The ability to navigate joint delivery of the Masters programmes with partners at the Royal College
of Art, including identifying and acting on strategic opportunities for further collaboration
• Communication with participants in the programmes, including senior executive participants
• Spearheading the creation of new programmes and education offers, including the navigation of the
necessary contractual relationships to bring these to fruition.
The Helix Centre’s work is highly collaborative, creative and interdisciplinary, integrating with a range of
generalists and specialists, from designers, technologists to clinicians and academics. You will be
comfortable in a fast paced, changing environment, with a good feel for when to expand creatively and
when and how to focus.

Key Responsibilities

The Helix Centre’s Head of Education will be expected to manage and lead a number of tasks including
but not limited to:
Programme and Module Delivery, development and evaluation:
• Be accountable for the Helix-delivered modules within both the MSc / MRes in Healthcare and Design
and the Digital Health Leadership postgraduate programmes
• Develop and deliver module content where appropriate, either in-person or online
• Manage a distributed/matrixed team of designers, teaching fellows and other specialist to develop and
deliver course content (i.e. teaching materials, methods and approaches)
• Identify and coordinate external guest speakers to deliver value-adding content to the modules, e.g.
case examples, panel discussions and other sessions
• As Associate Director of the MSc / MRes in Healthcare and Design, contribute to periodic strategic
reviews of the programme content and feedback, and provide specialist, expert advice in implementing
improvements that maintain relevance and provide the best student experience
• Facilitate and support use of appropriate tools and technologies to support and promote new ways of
teaching and learning
• Seek and act on strategic opportunities for closer collaborations that would enhance our existing
educational offers

Project Management, Portfolio Growth and Stakeholder Engagement

• Manage relationships and ongoing activities with Helix educational partners and collaborators
• Facilitate the development and maintenance of partnerships and collaborations, and the growth of new
and existing networks
• Identify, develop and deliver future education offers from the Helix Centre, including bespoke corporate
training, online short-courses, in-person bootcamps, weekend intensives, etc.
• Secure funding to support the sustainability of our education offers and provide an income stream for
cross-cutting Helix Centre activities and further growth
• Develop clear objective and targeted outcomes in relation to Helix’s milestone achievements in these
areas
• Manage responses to internal and external requests for information
• Lead meetings related to our current and future education programmes and prepare papers for
submission to other committee meetings, internal and external.

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• Position Helix and IGHI as a leader in design and health education and methods by capturing and
promoting sharable methods, impact case studies and showcasing the prestige and profile of course
speakers and networks

Development and documentation of best-practice methods for design in healthcare

• Collaborating on the capture and documentation of methods applied with Helix product and service
design projects as accessible and shareable toolkits and best practice frameworks for both internal team
and external use
• Maintaining own specialist knowledge in design and design thinking, including maintaining sight of the
work of design academics and practitioners globally to ensure that we are constantly learning and
evolving our methods, and remain a pioneering and inclusive design organisation

Other duties:
• Supporting and collaborating on project work at the Helix Centre where needed
• Undertaking relevant training
• Managing administrative processes
• Contributing to academic publications about our methods and their impact

Person Specification

Requirements Essential (E)/

Candidates/post holders will be expected to demonstrate the following: Desirable (D)
Education
Undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a design-related discipline E.g. E
Industrial/product, communication, interaction or service design, or a teaching
qualification
Postgraduate qualification in a relevant field or teaching qualification E
Experience
Demonstrable experience in the principles and methods of inclusive and human E
centred design, working collaboratively with user groups in healthcare to meet their
needs
Experience of having developed a new product or service from concept to launch D
Experience of working in the NHS or social care environments D
Experience in postgraduate teaching E
Experience in leading programme assessment, evaluation and improvement D
Experience of leading projects within a client-facing or service-provider role e.g. D
design agency work in which a project was tailored to meet client needs
Experience of project management with a good understanding of principles and E
methodologies
Experience of leading and working in teams of different disciplines e.g. with E
engineers and developers and/or healthcare professionals.
Knowledge
Knowledge of methodologies and frameworks in inclusive and human-centred E
design, and specialism in one or more disciplines e.g. user research, product design,
service design, content design, interaction design, UX/UI
Knowledge of latest trends and technologies in healthcare E
Specialist knowledge of digital health, digital transformation, or data and AI D
Demonstrable familiarity with a variety of strategies to promote and assess teaching D

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 Skills & Abilities
Ability to own and lead development of content that teaches others best practice E
human-centred design concepts
Skills to coordinate teams in multi-partner collaborations E
Evidence of outstanding communication, presentation and inter-personal relationship E
skills.
Excellent leadership and team building skills with the ability to create and lead a E
common culture to support innovation and experimentation
Planning and management skills, including ability to prioritise workloads when E
working on multiple projects
Excellent time-management and organisational skills E
Ability to work under pressure and deliver to deadlines E
Evidence of creativity and having looked beyond the status quo to solve a problem E
Patience, resilience and a problem solving ‘can do approach’ combined with rigour E
and structured thinking.
Ability to own and lead development of content that teaches others best practice E
human-centred design concepts

Further Information

Please note that job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, and the post-holder may be required to undertake
other duties, which are broadly in line with the above key responsibilities.
Imperial College is committed to equality of opportunity and to eliminating discrimination. All employees are
expected to follow the Imperial Values & Behaviours framework. Our values are:
• Respect
• Collaboration
• Excellence
• Integrity
• Innovation

Employees are also required to comply with all College policies and regulations paying special attention to:
Confidentiality, Conflict of Interest, Data Protection, Equal Opportunities, Financial Regulations, Health and
Safety, Information Technology, Smoking, Private Engagements and Register of Interests. They must also
undertake specific training and assume responsibility for safety relevant to specific roles, as set out on the
College Website Health and Safety Structure and Responsibilities page.

As this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring
Service (DBS) check, at the appropriate level, will be required for the successful candidate. Further
information about the DBS disclosure process can be found at: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-
public-bodies/dbs/ or by telephoning 03000 200 190. You may also wish to view the College’s DBS webpage
for policy statements on the Recruitment and Employment of Ex-Offenders and the Secure Storage, Use,
Retention & Disposal of Disclosures and Disclosure Information.

The College is a proud signatory to the San-Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which
means that in hiring and promotion decisions, we evaluate applicants on the quality of their work, not the
journal impact factor where it is published. For more information, see https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-
and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-evaluation/

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The College believes that the use of animals in research is vital to improve human and animal health and
welfare. Animals may only be used in research programmes which are ultimately aimed towards finding new
treatments and making scientific and medical advances, and where there are no satisfactory or reasonably
practical alternatives to their use. Imperial is committed to ensuring that, in cases where this research is
deemed essential, all animals in the College’s care are treated with full respect, and that all staff involved with
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We are committed to equality of opportunity, to eliminating discrimination and to creating an inclusive working
environment for all. We therefore encourage candidates to apply irrespective of age, disability, marriage or
civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion and belief, gender reassignment, sex, or sexual
orientation. We are an Athena SWAN Silver Award winner, a Disability Confident Leader and a Stonewall
Diversity Champion.

April 2024