About EIT Health

EIT Health is a network of best-in-class health innovators backed by the EU. We collaborate across borders to deliver new solutions that can enable European citizens to live longer, healthier lives.

As Europeans tackle the challenge of increasing chronic diseases and multi-morbidity, and seek to realise the opportunities that technology offers to move beyond conventional approaches to treatment, prevention and healthy lifestyles, we need thought leaders, innovators and efficient ways to bring innovative healthcare solutions to market.

EIT Health addresses these needs. We connect all relevant healthcare players across European borders – making sure to include all sides of the “knowledge triangle”, so that innovation can happen at the intersection of research, education and business for the benefit of citizens.

We facilitate

At EIT Health, we facilitate innovation to improve the health of European citizens. In Innovation Projects, workshops, and start-up programmes, we foster collaboration – and support innovators with funding, expertise, and access to the market, so that breakthrough ideas can be implemented rapidly.

We collaborate

We collaborate across European borders and bring stakeholders to the table. We build strong links between business, research and education. And we connect innovators with payers, public authorities and investors. This allows us to break down existing barriers, boost entrepreneurship, and help build a stronger health ecosystem in Europe.

We create

The EIT Health network comprises best-in-class health innovators, who create outside-the-box solutions. We deliver meaningful new products and services and support ground-breaking ideas. These efforts help create new businesses and jobs – while always putting the health of citizens front and centre.

We educate

We want to improve health education, promote healthy lifestyles, and help health professionals grow. To this end, we share insights and disseminate knowledge. Because we believe that our findings and efforts can benefit many, we share them through citizen engagement activities, workshops, and skill development programmes.

EIT Health maintains a regional structure that stretches across Europe, with six co-location centres (CLCs) in cities that have high innovation ratings and feature clusters of innovative firms, universities and research centres. With its headquarters in Munich, Germany, EIT Health has established CLCs in six regions, UK/Ireland, Scandinavia, Spain, France, Germany/Switzerland, and Belgium/Netherlands. With the aim of leveraging diversity and driving the potential of emerging innovation clusters, EIT Health has also added the “EIT Health lnnoStars” in six countries: Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Wales (UK).

EIT Health is a Knowledge and Innovation Community established by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.

EIT Health: Together for healthy lives in Europe. For more information visit: http://www.eithealth.eu/

The Role

EIT Health strives to ensure a fully embedded and integrated Citizen and Patient Engagement strategy that reflects our ambition that all that EIT Health delivers upon should aim to ultimately benefit European patients and citizens. As a consequence, integrating the citizens and patient voice is not only a core part of EIT Health’s ethical and social responsibility but it will bring a fully personalised approach to healthcare that has high potential for healthcare breakthroughs that truly meet unmet need. Citizens and patients who share their thoughts, ideas and insights about the conditions and diseases that they are affected by, assist EIT Health in understanding the right needs and receiving early market validation, therefore making our innovation efforts more effective. EIT Health aims to engage with representative citizens and patients as partners in all relevant activities to provide meaningful input, collaboration and to co-create solutions that may contribute to improved patient and citizen health outcomes and health systemic change at both local and international level.

The expansion of the EIT Health portfolio (projects and programmes) has resulted in the need for a higher degree of systematic assessment of how citizen and patient engagement can truly be integrated throughout our entire portfolio of EIT Health.

Three objectives have been identified:

(a) a more systematic alignment between the different programmes to build and implement strong citizen and patient engagement processes and activities at all appropriate levels of portfolio development ensuring the patient voice is central and informs all that we do;

(b) deeper relationships between EIT Health partners and their patient and citizen communities as well as relationships between EIT Health and other European patient and citizen communities to support the definition of more relevant and tailored criteria and endpoints to determine real benefit and impact;

(c) a more systematic approach in terms of effective outreach and communication to integrate and embed citizen and patient engagement into the overall EIT Health external stakeholder strategy.

This newly created role will therefore encompass three key areas of focus to contribute to the objectives:

a) Portfolio Development and Capacity Building of the partnership: The EIT Health community is made up of 140 partners. The need to effectively engage, inform and train this community towards citizen and patient engagement is a central strand of our success; that our partners are active and contributory, are ambassadors for EIT Health’s citizen directed endeavours and are inspired and motivated by our collective achievements and the ongoing value we generate.

The postholder will develop and deliver a comprehensive roadmap for incorporating and integrating the patient and citizens voice and deliver training to partners how to engage citizens and patients the best possible way. Proposed activities will include the following;

• train the partners how to engage citizens and patients in the most meaningful way to deliver high impactful programmes
• devising mechanisms (e.g. a ‘needs’ database) to systematically inform the portfolio development;
• develop procedures to identify high-level themes for specific citizen directed actions (e.g. how to systematically engage citizens in our living labs);
• develop organisational mechanisms for projects and activities to contribute to better health outcomes for citizens on a concrete level (e.g. through the annual Call for Proposals). A critical component of this will not only be the review, assessment and augmentation of the current set of activities designed to involve patient and citizens, but also the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and evaluation criteria applied in the annual call to determine and elevate the right measures of success.

b) Partnership Development: Strategic partnership and alliance development is one of the crucial building blocks for driving our portfolio successes. A key objective is to build and foster a community of partners who actively and seamlessly engage with citizens and patients at all relevant stages and levels of solution and service development of all EIT Health activities This community is part of the overall partnership community strategy as well as in alignment with the yearly call for proposal processes. A second objective is to develop a thorough understanding and appreciation of how to build influential relationships with third party groups and individuals that are primarily focused on patient and citizen centricity in their missions and objectives.

The postholder will deliver and implement a roadmap to build strong meaningful alliances within our partnership, e.g. through support in jointly built targeted projects and other actions that are directed to leverage our impact. Lastly, the role will involve setting up relevant mechanisms designed to capture and involve external expertise in this field into all elements of portfolio development and execution (for example, by setting up a network of European city mayors to provide better healthcare and well-being services to their citizens, or the formation of an EIT Health Patient Advisory Board).

c) Citizen and Patient Outreach and Communication Strategy:

EIT Health has identified the need to demonstrate and communicate the extent and nature of the value we generate within the broader healthcare landscape; always taking the final beneficiaries, the patients and citizens of Europe, into account. To ensure their needs and benefits are systematically captured and communicated in a robust and cohesive way, a focused outreach and communication roadmap and its implementation will be required.

Thus, the postholder will work closely with the communication team to integrate and embed the citizen and patient stakeholder group into the EIT Health communication strategy. The creation of an appropriate network and community of informed and engaged patients and citizens will facilitate the dissemination of best practice and engagement programmes and initiatives in a more systematic way.

Success in this role will involve building strong working relationships with the Education, Business Creation and Innovation Directors and their teams to align and synergise to define and implement an organisationally driven overarching strategy singularly dedicated to citizen and patient engagement. In addition, the post holder will also closely work with the External Affairs Director and the Head of Communications to align with the overall external stakeholder engagement and communication strategy.

This is an exciting time to join the team at EIT Health and provides a fantastic opportunity to make a positive and meaningful impact, as we continue to enhance our profile, exert influence and drive thought leadership within the European healthcare ecosystem.

The postholder reports directly to the EIT Health Director of Education on behalf of all programmes with a second reporting line to the EIT Health Director of External Affairs. The postholder is required to provide specialist citizen and patient engagement advice as well as stakeholder management and communication advice, expertise and guidance to the Leadership team at both a strategic and operational level.

About you

We’re looking for an experienced patient and citizen advocacy and engagement expert with significant experience of developing and implementing effective patient and citizen engagement strategies, including outreach and communications, ideally within a patient organisation or within the healthcare or related industries. You bring strong experience in leading complex projects utilising a cross-European, multi-stakeholder approach with a proven track record of establishing effective working relationships with key internal and external stakeholders.

You will support collaboration and communication across the organisation by identifying synergies and interdependencies across education, business Creation an innovation, external affairs and communications as well as project management and activity leaders inside EIT Health, with our partner organisations as well as external strategic partners.

This is a challenging and highly visible role that will require high levels of resilience, flexibility and drive for results.

Responsibilities

• Serve as EIT Health’s internal advisor on all matters related to effective and strategic patient and citizen engagement including providing training to the partnership no how to ensure the right patient and citizen engagement
• Build relationships with the Directors of Education, Business Creation and Innovation, the Director of External Affairs and the Project Management Office (PMO) helping to align individual strategies towards a unified citizens and patient engagement approach
• Provide leading oversight of all EIT Health activities that are directed to citizens and patients in the entire portfolio and facilitate the collaboration between partners to develop, supplement and support the portfolio further
• Constantly monitor and review our KPIs and evaluation criteria used in our yearly call for proposals and deriving concrete actions to move this towards higher impact activities.
• Constantly analyse information from the latest research and developments in the sector; identify opportunities, building consensus and facilitating approaches that secure wide public interest and engagement
• Identify, develop, deliver and evaluate innovative and implement inclusive approaches and projects that increase the diversity of patient and public contributors across citizen & patient engagement activities
• Serve as a resource offering guidance and direction to CLC team members on their regional patient outreach approach
• Build relationships with the Director of External Affairs, the Head of Communication and the CLC Communication and Public Affairs teams to drive for stronger communication toward other European and national organisations directed to citizen & patient engagement
• Ensuring a coordinated communication to all relevant audiences on citizen and patient engagement achievements, including updates to partners with regular, meaningful and consistent information about the development of the strategy to develop a shared sense of community
• Identify, develop and drive partnerships with relevant external stakeholders that are also dedicated to patient and citizen engagement and build a significant showcase of appropriate joint activities
• Develop and deliver approaches for organizing events to highlight existing citizen engagement and build connection points to external organizations
• Support the CLC teams in the implementation of their local strategies, such as work with patient organizations
• Commissioning and contracting external organisations and/or freelance staff to deliver elements of projects (if needed)
• Develop Terms of Reference for groups and ensure that actions are implemented
• Ensure a thorough and current project implementation plan for all citizen and patient directed activities located at HQ and the CLCLs including forecasting future budget needs for dedicated citizen and patient related activities, monitoring and managing income and expenditure
• Be responsible for delivering citizen & patient engagement projects to time and target, including effective project management and day-to-day responsibility for, monitoring and coordination of budgets
• Undertaking any other duties that may reasonably be required from time to time which will include contributing to the wider team
• Being flexible in working out of standard office hours (evening and weekends) when necessary

Essential criteria

• Educated to degree level in a relevant subject (biomedical, health or social science, communications or related subject.) or equivalent experience in programme delivery
• Proven track record in the health care sector, including a patient and citizen engagement and/or external affairs role with the proven ability to further develop and implement an integrated content-driven patient and citizen engagement strategy utilising a multi-national, multi-stakeholder approach
• Experience in / good knowledge of the healthcare sector within Europe that includes a strong understanding of the latest healthcare trends and issues, how healthcare ecosystems and systems are structured and directed towards patient outcomes
• A good understanding of the role of different related organisations and institutions, such as patient advocacy groups
• Experience in managing VIP relations in a public or government body, NGOS, Patient Organizations, think tank or similar
• A clear demonstration of the understanding and application of the benefits and value derived from effective patient and citizen engagement and to provide associated guidance and counsel to the organisation on an ongoing basis to support organisational strategic direction and impact
• Good understanding of the ‘knowledge triangle’, ie the intersection between education, research and business creation sector with respect to citizen and patient engagement in order to advise for building the right partnerships and implementation strategies
• Excellent interpretation and analytical skills
• Creative strategic thinker who can both shape projects, drive delivery and personally execute; demonstrated analytical thinking capability
• Strong track record of influencing and building collaborative relationships with highly diverse stakeholders
• Highly developed influencing and collaboration skills- the ability to create a valuable and meaningful community of partners, cities and citizens
• Strong team player with ability to navigate a highly complex organisational structure and operational processes of a growing organisation
• Ability to work at differing level; from briefing the CEO, working with the different directors, working with senior leaders from our partner organisations, working with and providing guidance to CLC teams, influencing policies across different regions and cultures
• Proficiency in both long-term strategic planning and impromptu on-deadline performance; ability to work tight deadlines and under pressure across multiple projects
• Fluent English language skills, both oral and written, with ability to write request for proposals from suppliers and the ability to select suppliers after analysis of appropriate suppliers based on requirements. Additional European languages are a distinct advantage.
• Self-starter, ability to use initiative, good work ethic with a can-do attitude

Desirable criteria

• Experience in public affairs in a government body, trade association, business membership organisation, think tank or similar
• Experience working with start-ups, innovators, business membership organisation

What we offer

• The role is a full-time position (1 FTE), with regular travel – primarily in Europe.
• Start-up mentality, fast and flat processes, straight internal communication, non-hierarchical structure and freedom to operate with autonomy
• An extensive network in the healthcare sector, with exposure to high-level and senior representatives, key players and influencers
• The opportunity to work on critical projects of European interest, contributing to bettering the lives of patients and citizens
• Familiar atmosphere within a dynamic team
• A competitive salary and benefits package
• Learning and development programme for staff

Notes

The official working language of EIT Health is English. The post will be based at our Munich headquarters by preference but remote working with regular travel to the Munich office can be considered.

Working relations

EIT Health Director of Education (line manager)
EIT Health Director of External Affairs (functional manager with dotted reporting line) EIT Health Innovation, Business Creation (Accelerator) Directors and PMO
CLC teams at our regional offices
EIT Health partners who lead Citizen and Patient Engagement Activities

To aply

Applications should consist of a full curriculum vitae and a cover letter describing briefly how you meet the above criteria indicated in the person specification and outlining your interest in and vision for the role. Applications shall be submitted via e-mail to applications@eithealth.eu, with the subject line “EIT Health Citizen and Patient Engagement Manager”, by 25 May 2019.
Please indicate your earliest possible entry date as well as salary expectations. The selected candidate is expected to commence duties as soon as possible.

Source: EIT Health