Safe Deployment and Clinical Monitoring of a Multilingual AI Triage System for Linguistically Diverse Patients in Emergency Departments

Australia's emergency departments (“ED”) are under pressure. Each year, over eight million patients present to EDs nationally, including millions who speak little or no English. For these patients, the triage encounter, a critical 3 to 5-minute conversation that determines how urgently they receive care, is fraught with miscommunication, misclassification, and risk of harm.  

TRIBOT is an AI-powered multilingual triage-assistance research prototype being developed at the University to support communication and structured information capture for linguistically diverse patients in ED triage. This Project will build on the TRIBOT program by focusing on the research, engineering and evaluation activities needed to strengthen the prototype’s real-time inference pipeline and clinical AI safety-monitoring framework. 

The Project is intended to support simulation-based testing, approved research evaluation and future readiness for safe clinical translation. It does not, by itself, authorise live clinical deployment, clinical decision-making use, access to identifiable patient information, hospital implementation or integration with hospital systems. Any such activity will require separate ethics, governance, privacy, technical, regulatory, data access, work health and safety, and site approvals, as applicable. 

The Student will research and engineer a prototype real-time inference pipeline capable of being tested against ED-relevant operational constraints, and design and evaluate a clinical AI safety-monitoring framework intended to detect uncertainty, failure modes, safety risks and escalation points before any clinical-use or deployment pathway is considered. 

Supervisory team

UNSW

CSIRO

Industry

The Opportunity 

The CSIRO Industry PhD Program (iPhD) is a four-year research training program, focusing on applied research that benefits industry by solving real-world challenges. It aims to produce the next generation of innovation leaders with the skills to work at the interface of research and industry in Australia.

The Program includes:

• Admission to a university PhD program.
• Supervision by the participating university, CSIRO, and an industry partner.
•  A four year scholarship package totalling approximately $48,000 per annum tax exempt (2026 rate).  
• A four year Project Expense and Development package starting from $13,000 per annum.
• A 60 day Industry Engagement component with the industry partner.
• A structured professional development and training program to develop your applied research skills.

Successful students are subject to the policies, procedures and guidelines of the participating university in addition to the CSIRO Industry PhD Program terms and conditions. Students will receive a standard PhD on completion.

Eligibility

The student must: 

• Be an Australian citizen or Permanent Resident, or a New Zealand citizen.  
• Meet participating university PhD admission requirements. 
• Meet university English language requirements. 
• Not have previously completed a PhD.
• Be able to commence the Program in the year of the offer. 
• Enrol as a full-time PhD student. Part-time arrangements may be considered if approved by the supervisory team and in accordance with university policy.
• Be prepared to be located at the project location(s) that the host university has approved and, if required, comply with the host university’s external enrolment procedures. 
• Be prepared to undergo onboarding to CSIRO, which will include passing mandatory government background checks (allow for between 4 to 8 weeks) and complete any other CSIRO requirements.

How to Apply

Submit an expression of interest (EOI) to Dr Padmanesan Narasimhan at padmanesan@unsw.edu.au. If you are shortlisted, you will need to apply for admission to UNSW.