Internship in Digital Health/Epidemiology/Biostatistics/Public Health (Master students only)

Background

With the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging evidence indicates that patients who have survived the initial infection are experiencing a long-term, heterogeneous spectrum of symptoms that persist for several months, so-called Long Covid. The most frequent symptoms include fatigue, anxiety, headaches, muscle pain, shortness of breath, and cognitive impairment. People with Long COVID are highly impacted in their daily lives with difficulties to retrieve the same level of work and activities than before COVID-19 infection. With the UpcomingVoice1 project we co-designed a symptom tracking app with people with Long COVID (PWLC) and healthcare professionals in charge of Long COVID patients. The Long COVID Companion app's first version was developed and launched in April 2024. The app is intended to provide day-to-day support to PWLC, with a diary of symptoms, medical events, daily life events etc. 

Objectives

This project aims to analyse data and metadata of the Long COVID Companion app, assess user engagement and usability of the solution, and describe the data related to Long COVID symptoms. This project is part of the CoVaLux initiative in Luxembourg.

Training and research environment. The “Deep Digital Phenotyping Research Unit” develops a research activity within the Department of Precision Health at the frontier between digital epidemiology, digital health and data science, to leverage real-world data to improve population health. The intern will be supervised by Aurélie Fischer, Scientific coordinator and Dr. Guy Fagherazzi, Director of the Department of Precision Health and Deep Digital Phenotyping  lab.

The Master’s student will directly contribute to the research effort on Covid-19 in Luxembourg. He/She will have to take charge of the literature review, the pre-processing of the data, the data analysis, and the preparation of a scientific article. This internship position may lead to a PhD opportunity.

What we offer :

• Students will have the opportunity to work in an interactive and international scientific environment, attend conferences by eminent scientists from abroad, and present their own work during lab meetings.

• They will receive training in digital epidemiology research and digital health and will have the opportunity to gain skills in data analysis, project management and AI.

Criteria:

• Master level in Digital Health, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Public Health,  or equivalent required.

• Flexibility, adaptability, autonomy

• Ability to work with different profiles and people from different experiences and cultural backgrounds

• Language skills: Fluency in French and English is an asset, with written skills in English. Any other language in use in Luxembourg would also be an asset.

• Applicants must be affiliated with their own University.

Related references

1. Aurélie Fischer, Gloria Aguayo, India Pinker, Pauline Oustric, Jérôme Larché, Charles Benoy, and Guy Fagherazzi. Co-design of the Long COVID Companion voice-based app to monitor Long COVID symptoms with its end-users: A mixed-method study. Digital Health. 2024. DOI: 10.1177/20552076241272671 

2. Aurélie Fischer, Nolwenn Badier, Lu Zhang, Abir Elbéji, Paul Wilmes, Pauline Oustric, Charles Benoy, Markus Ollert, and Guy Fagherazzi. Long COVID classification: findings from a clustering analysis in the predi-COVID cohort study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(23), 16018; DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192316018

3. Aurélie Fischer, Lu Zhang, Abir Elbéji, Paul Wilmes, Pauline Oustric, Therese Staub, Petr V. Nazarov, Markus Ollert, Guy Fagherazzi. Long COVID symptomatology after twelve months and its impact on quality of life according to initial COVID-19 disease severity. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2022 Aug 5;9(8):ofac397. DOI: 10.1093/ofid/ofac397