Day rate £500-650 | 1-2 days/per week | Until July 2024 with possibility of extension | Sub Saharan Africa preferred
Deadline: 11th of September, 9am GMT +1
Since its inception as an immediate response effort to the pandemic, the FCDO-funded Oxygen CoLab has been working with partners to create and accelerate the conditions necessary to fully understand the role and importance of the oxygen concentrator. Read more here about our journey, track record, and learnings to date.
With new funding from UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, we are now entering a two year phase of deeper exploration and learning, working with a range of brilliant grantees to build evidence on the use cases for oxygen concentrators, deepening our collective understanding across what works, how, and where when it comes to concentrators: .
- What might it look like if fit-for-purpose oxygen concentrators are being used in the right places, at the right time, for the right people?
- How might this need differ between countries to account for the contextual differences in the set up of their health systems?
- What evidence is needed to prove that the oxygen concentrator has a role to play in the global oxygen space?
The Oxygen CoLab’s central hypothesis is that if we collect evidence about the use case for different concentrator products and services in different contexts, and we use that evidence along with collective action to advocate for changes to policy and investment (nationally and globally), then reliable oxygen will be accessible and affordable to patients at the place and time of need.
We have several interconnected portfolios of work, acting on different parts of the system, to help us learn against our hypothesis - the Lab, in our CoLab:
- A portfolio of grantees experimenting with service modalities (Oxygen-as-a-service)
- A portfolio of work encouraging product innovation (through R&D, lab testing, and market stimuli).
We aim to build on this evidence to learn out loud and build partnerships with stakeholders, coming together to advocate for giving oxygen concentrators their place in the global oxygen space - the Co, in our CoLab.
What we’re looking for…
An Oxygen Technical Expert to join our team and explore these big questions together. We are a mixed bag of motivated strategists, coaches, managers, designers and experts in global and national advocacy, scaling within health systems, driving product and service innovation, and bringing people together, amongst others. We’re looking for an oxygen expert to bring their health and technology smarts on concentrators, R&D processes, financing for product, health technologies, and health service-based models. We have a preference for the oxygen technical expert to be based in Sub Saharan Africa, ideally Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania.
The role
What you’ll be doing:
Manage our R&D portfolio
- Provide technical expertise in the selection and support of our R&D grant portfolio, who range from established oxygen concentrator manufacturers to next-generation innovators, to ensure we’re investing in meaningful innovation and the work is completed to expected standards
- Work with our lab testing partners to interpret the results and plan the most effective dissemination of those results.
Support the long-term sustainability of our Oxygen-as-a-Service portfolio
- Provide tailored technical assistance to oxygen-as-a-service grantees on oxygen-related technical requests/inquiries
- Conduct overview technical analysis of the wider Oxygen-as-a-Service portfolio, focusing on technical gaps for products and potential growth-oriented opportunities for grantees
Support our advocacy efforts to make the case for oxygen concentrators
- Work and influence a broad group of health stakeholders including Ministries of Health, Oxygen-as-a-service grantees, manufacturers, oxygen donor community
- Support relationship building and forming concrete partnerships with other oxygen actors, in service of jointly collecting evidence and jointly making the case for oxygen localisation.
- Map/understand different oxygen stakeholders, and identify who we should be building relationships with to expand access
- Represent the Oxygen CoLab in public fora, keeping on track with Every Breath Counts, WHO, Lancet Comission etc. championing our work in these settings
- Support our preparations for our Advisory Board, to get the best of our Board
Thought leadership and strategic thinking
- Contribute to team reflections on the evidence gathered from our portfolio of grantees, and reflecting on what this means for what we’re learning about concentrators and service-based models and where we should invest next
- Craft appropriate messages that speak to our global audiences, about our evidence, with help from the team, ensuring we ‘speak the right language’
- Feedback learning and evidence from the latest reports, debates, discussions, events, into our strategy, so we are always up to the latest on oxygen
- Willingness to travel to different locations as needed. Our portfolio is based in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, India, Philippines
- Willingness to work highly collaboratively, sharing draft work early and often, adapting often based on feedback
Your skills and experience:
- Degree in biomedical engineering, medtech, or a related engineering field.
- At least 10 years of experience driving oxygen / medical product innovation in low and middle income countries (LIMCs)
- Significant experience working with the global health donor community, Ministries of Health in LMICs, UN organisations
- Proven experience in driving product innovation, scaling oxygen adoption, testing and investment in the medical sphere, especially within oxygen
- Strong understanding of lower levels of healthcare principles and characteristics
Desirable:
- Masters or PhD in medicine, public health, biomedical engineering, medtech, healthcare management, or a related field
We also look for these interpersonal skills (being a ‘Brinkster’):
- Growth mindset: keen and eager to experiment and learn, comfortable with not knowing all the answers yet and happy to let stuff go when it doesn’t quite hit the mark
- Is ‘interoperable’: quickly establishes rapport with all kinds of people
- Enjoys ‘making others shine': Brink is a low-ego zone that thrives on making our colleagues, clients and collaborators shine
- Self-starter: proactive, can 'get on with it', has a sense of agency and a point of view
How to apply
If you’re interested in joining us, please click on the ‘apply now’ button. This will take you to an online application form where we will ask you to upload your CV as well as a response to the following question:
‘What are the barriers and opportunities for scaling oxygen access across low and middle income countries? What opportunities do you see for concentrators and for services based models, and what should the CoLab explore to scale them?’
You are encouraged to be as creative as you are comfortable with and choose any structure or layout to present your information, as long as you keep it under 50mb.
📅 The deadline for this application is 9am GMT +1, 4th of September 2023. You will receive an email from the system to confirm your application has been received and we will be in touch (we aim for within 2 weeks) to let you know if we’ll be taking it further.
🔗 Our commitment as Brink
Diversity is in our DNA at Brink and we’re proud of the broad range of Brinksters we have on board. We also know there is always room for improvement which is why we track diversity in all its guises to see how we’re doing, and make efforts to cast our hiring net as wide as possible. Our latest survey shows we could do better in some areas, so we’re particularly encouraging applications from people of the Global Ethnic Majority, people over 50, parents, neurodiverse people and/or those living with a disability.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability or age. We are happy to discuss any reasonable adjustments individuals may require in the recruitment process, on commencement, or once in post.
Where is this role based?
We require people to be based in GMT + or - 3. We have a strong preference for them to be based in Sub Saharan Africa, ideally Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania, but we will consider any country in GMT + or - 3 hours.
Over the past few years, our health portfolio at Brink has grown, and we are fortunate to work with partners and collaborators on some of the biggest health challenges of our time such as: improving global access to oxygen, exploring the role of data for equitable vaccine uptake, addressing cancer-related fatigue in marginalised communities, and improving workplace wellbeing.
We’re looking for expertise that complements what we have, with personalities and attitudes that chime with our own. In the next few months we’ll be actively looking for a Health Systems Innovation Lead to help shape and grow our health portfolio. If you want to apply systems strengthening approaches alongside innovation methods to tackle global health challenges, please get in touch. We’re going to start hiring soon.
Express your interest for the upcoming Health Systems Innovation Lead role by emailing us your CV at [email protected]
