The Adelaide Graduate Research School (AGRS) and Akuru are partnering to create an internship opportunity for a University of Adelaide PhD student, to contribute to the following project.

About the project

Akuru develops clinical AI tools designed to enhance safety, efficiency, and quality in healthcare decision-making and documentation. This internship focuses on a retrospective validation study of Akuru’s i-triage system, an AI-assisted tool that supports early clinical categorisation by analysing presenting complaints and risk factors to suggest urgency, disposition, and next-step pathways.

The project will evaluate how i-triage categorisation compares to real-world clinical decisions made in public hospital emergency departments (EDs) or outpatient settings. The study aims to determine whether i-triage provides safe, reliable, and clinically-aligned triage recommendations, and to inform future accreditation and deployment.

Objectives

• Assess concordance between i-triage AI-generated categories and historical clinician-assigned categories from ED or outpatient records.
• Use validated quantitative tools (e.g., safety scoring instruments, clinical decision agreement scales) to evaluate appropriateness and safety of i-triage outputs.
• Identify patterns in over-triage/under-triage, risk flags, and clinical domains where AI alignment is strongest or weakest.
• Produce transferable recommendations for clinical implementation, workflow integration, and risk management.

Key Deliverables

• Peer-reviewed manuscript submitted before internship completion.
• Internal and/or external presentation of results to academic, clinical, and industry audiences.
• Reproducible outputs including:
• Analysis protocol
• Validated questionnaire scoring framework
• Aggregated datasets (de-identified/synthetic)
• Statistical analysis code
• Acknowledgement of Akuru collaboration in all outputs.

Governance & Ethics

Projects involving patient or staff data will require ethics approval and must comply with University of Adelaide, SA Health, and partner-site governance requirements. Only de-identified or synthetic datasets will be used unless explicit approval is granted. All confidentiality, IP arrangements, and publication review processes follow the Research Internship Agreement.

Candidate Profile
 

This internship is suited to HDR candidates in medicine, psychology, allied health, or clinical informatics with strong quantitative skills and an interest in clinical AI safety, triage research, and real-world implementation science.

Eligibility  

The PhD student must be:  

• within the first 18 months of their candidature,  
• willing to undertake the research internship for a minimum duration of 60 FTE business days,  
• making satisfactory progress, and  
• undertaking research in an area aligned with the proposed research internship project  

More information about University of Adelaide's Research Internships is available here.

Application Process  

To apply, please email the following documents to hdr_internships@adelaide.edu.au (HDR Internships Team) with the internship name in the title:  

• Resume
• Cover Letter (of not more than 2 pages) outlining your interest in the internship and describing how your research area aligns with the proposed field of research internship.  

Please note that applications will be considered on a rolling basis and the advertisement may be closed earlier if a suitable applicant is shortlisted for a particular project prior to the listed closing date. Furthermore, if shortlisted, a meeting is likely to be organised between the student, their supervisor and the organisation's focal contact person within a week of shortlisting. Students may consider discussing their internship plans with their Principal Supervisor in anticipation of that.