Current Members
If you would like to become a member of the IHDLN or would like to contact any of our members, contact emma.fuller@health.wa.gov.au
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Ajay Puri |
Centre for Addiction Research of British Columbia |
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Alan Katz, Associate Director for Research |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Albert King, Team Leader |
ScotXed Professional Services |
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Alexandra Godfrey, Project Manager |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Alice Chen, Research Associate |
Simon Fraser University |
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Alistair Vickery |
School of General Practice, University of Western Australia |
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Amanda Langridge, Research Officer |
Telethon Institute for Child Health Research |
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Andrew Stanley, Chair |
South Australia- Northern Territory DataLink |
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Anna Ferrante, Deputy Director |
PHRN Centre for Data Linkage, Curtin University |
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Ann-Marie Chapman, Data Analyst |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Bosu Seo |
University of Manitoba |
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Bree Heffernan, Research Officer |
Onemda VicHealth Koori Health Unit, Centre for Health and Society, Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne |
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Brenda Elias |
University of Manitoba |
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Brendon Kearney, Chair |
Population Health Research Network, South Australia |
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Carol Garfield |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Carole Morris |
Information Services Division, National Health Service |
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Caroline Brooks, Information Analyst |
Swansea University |
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Cate Cameron |
Griffith University |
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Catherine Storey, Information Analyst |
Healthcare Information Group, NHS National Services Scotland, Information Services Division |
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Cecilia Bukutu, Senior Partnership and Process Manager |
Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research |
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Charlotte King |
Alberta Health Services |
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Charlyn Black, Professor and Associate Director |
UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research |
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Chris Gascoigne, Technical Manager: Data Linkage |
University of South Australia |
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Christine O’Keefe, Strategic Operations Director, Preventative Health National Research Flagship |
Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics, CSIRO |
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Christine Roberts, Research Director, Population Perinatal Health Research, Kolling Institute |
University of Sydney |
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Christine Roberts |
University of Sydney |
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Christopher Radbone, Unit Manager |
SA NT DataLink, Sansom Institute for Health Research, University of South Australia |
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Chunli Gu |
Public Health Agency of Canada |
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Clare Wotton |
University of Oxford |
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Claudia Sanmartin, Senior Researcher, Health Services Research |
Health Analysis Division. Statistics Canada |
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Craig Earle, Director, Health Services Research Program |
Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research |
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D’arcy Holman, Chair in Public Health |
School of Population Health, University of Western Australia |
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Dave Holley, Linkage Officer |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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David Clark, Principal Information Analyst |
National Health Service, Scotland |
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David Cromwell |
Health Services Research Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine |
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David Ford |
Swansea University |
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David Hadorn, Director |
Centre for the Study of Assessment and Prioritisation in Health, Department of Public Health, University of Otago School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Wellington, New Zealand |
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David Henry, CEO |
Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto |
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David Whyatt, Research Associate Professor |
School of General Practice, University of Western Australia |
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Debbie Scott, Research Fellow |
National Centre for Health Information Research and Training/ Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit (QISU) |
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Diana Rosman, Program Manager |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Donna Turner |
Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Registry, CancerCare Manitoba |
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Douglas Jutte, Adjunct Assistant Professor |
Division of Community Health & Human Development, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley |
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Emma Fuller, Director |
International Health Data Linkage Network |
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Emma Glasson, Research Assistant Professor |
The University of Western Australia |
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Evangeline Than, Senior Research Officer (Systems Support) |
Data Linkage Unit, WA Department of Health |
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Fiona Stanley, Director |
Telethon Institute for Child Health Research |
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Gary Teare, Director of Quality Measurement and Analysis |
Health Quality Council, Saskatchewan, Canada |
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Gemma Van Halderen,Assistant Statistician |
Social Data Integration and Analysis Branch, Social Statistics Group, Australian Bureau of Statistics |
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Geoff Davis |
Department of Health of WA |
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Glenn Robbins |
Health Canada |
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Helen Johansen, Senior Analyst |
Statistics Canada |
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Hilarie Tardif |
Department of Health of WA |
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Hude Quan |
Department of Community Health Sciences, The Centre for Health and Policy Studies, University of Calgary, Canada |
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Ingrid Sketris |
Dalhousie University |
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Jack Rach, Communications Officer |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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James Boyd, Director, PHRN Centre for Data Linkage |
Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI), Curtin University of Technology |
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James Semmens, Chair |
Population Health Research, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI), Curtin University of Technology |
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James Thackray |
Department of Health of WA |
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Jan van der Meulen |
Health Services Research Unit, London School of Hygiene |
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Jane Ford, Senior Research Fellow |
Clinical and Population Perinatal Health Research, University of Sydney |
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Jane Freemantle, Principal Research Fellow |
Centre for Health and Society, Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne |
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Janine Alan, Research Associate Professor |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Jillian Oderkirk, Director |
Health Analysis Division, Statistics Canada |
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John Bass |
Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania |
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John Frank, Director |
Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy |
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Karen Sautter |
Health Policy and Management Department, Boston University School of Public Health |
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Ken Turner, Director |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Kerina Jones, Research Development Fellow |
Health Information Research Unit, School of Medicine, Swansea University, Wales, UK |
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Kevin Greig |
National Health Service |
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Kim Noseworthy, Research Assistant |
University of Calgary |
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Kimberlyn McGrail |
Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver |
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Kinga Varnai |
National Health Service |
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Kirsten McKenzie,Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow |
National Centre for Health Information Research and Training |
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Lee Taylor, Manager, Surveillance Methods, Centre for Epidemiology and Research, NSW Department of Health |
NSW Department of Health |
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Leicester Gill |
Division of Public Health & Primary Health Care, University of Oxford |
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Leslie Roos, Distinguished Professor |
Department of Community Health Sciences, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Lisa Lix,Centennial Chair & Associate Professor |
School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, CANADA |
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Louisa Jorm, Research Director |
The Sax Institute |
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Lucy Burns |
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia |
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Mabel Yap, Director |
Health Services Research and Evaluation, Singapore Health |
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Marcy Winget, Leader, Research and Evaluation |
Community Oncology, Cancer Care, Alberta Health Services |
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Margaret Wood |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Marianna Zakrzewski, Linkage Officer |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Mark Smith, Associate Director |
Repository, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Martin Bardsley, Head of Research |
Nuffield Trust |
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Melissa O’Donnell, Post-doctoral Researcher |
Telethon Institute for Child Health Research |
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Merilyn Heuschkel |
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Merran Smith, Chief Executive |
Population Health Research Network |
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Michael Goldacre, Professor of Public Health |
Oxford University, Department of Public Health |
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Michael Paterson |
Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, University of Toronto |
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Michael Wolfson |
Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modelling/Populomics |
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Michal Gornisiewicz |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Milt Kotelchuck, Chair of Community Health Sciences |
Boston University, School of Public Health |
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Min Zhang, Research Associate Professor |
School of Population Health, University of Western Australia |
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Morris Barer |
University of British Columbia |
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Muhamund Hag |
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Nancy Meagher, Executive Director |
Population Data British Columbia |
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Nancy Ross |
McGill University |
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Natasha Nassar |
University of Sydney |
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Nedeene Hudema, Senior Analyst |
Health Quality Council, Canada |
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Nick de Klerk, Head of Biostatistics |
Division of Population Science, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research |
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Noralou Roos, Professor, Community Health Sciences |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Pat Martens,Director, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba |
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Patricia McGettigan |
Hull York Medical School |
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Paul Boyle, Professor of Human Geography, Director of the Longitudinal Studies Centre - Scotland |
University of St Andrews |
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Paul Scuffham, Chair in Health Economics |
Centre for Applied Health Economics, School of Medicine, Griffith. University |
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Peter Cosgrove |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Peter Knight |
National Health Service |
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Phil Hider, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Epidemiology |
School of Medicine and Health Science, University of Otago, New Zealand |
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Rebecca Glauert, Project Coordinator |
Developmental Pathways in WA Children Project, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research |
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Robyn McDermott, Director |
SA NT DataLink |
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Ronan Lyons |
School of Medicine, Swansea University |
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Ruth Bond, Manager of Data Repository Access and Documentation |
Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba |
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Ruth Gilbert, rofessor of Clinical Epidemiology |
Institute of Child Health London |
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Sarath Chandrasekere |
Health Canada |
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Shauna Trafalski, Data Analyst |
Data Linkage Branch, Department of Health of WA |
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Simon Ellwood-Thompson, Technical Manager & System Architect |
Swansea University |
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Stafford Dean,Director, Health Information & System Management |
Alberta Health Services |
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Steve Kisely, Director |
Queensland Centre for Health Data Services, University of Queensland |
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Susan Samuel, Paediatric Nephrologist |
Alberta Children’s Hospital |
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Suzanne West |
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Teresa Mayer, Provincial EDI Coordinator |
Healthy Child Manitoba Office |
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Theo Georghiou |
The Nuffield Trust |
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Tim Stockwell, Director |
UVic Centre for Addictions Research of BC |
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Tom Eitelhuber, Senior Data Linkage Officer |
Department of Health of WA |
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Tony Woollacott, Manager, Research and Ethics Policy |
South Australia, Department of Health |
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Valerie Seagroatt, Statistician |
Unit of Health-Care Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford |
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Victoria Gray,Project Coordinator |
University of Western Australia |
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Vijaya Sundararajan |
Victoria Department of Health |
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Xinjie Cui |
Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research |
Meeting Convenors
Emma Fuller BSc MPH PhD Candidate
Executive Officer, Data Linkage Australia
Organisation:The University of Western Australia
Country: Australia
Emma Fuller nee Brook has completed a Bachelor of Science in Biophysics and Neuroscience and a Masters of Public Health, both at the University of Western Australia. For six years she has worked at the Western Australian Data Linkage Branch, initially as a Linkage Officer, linking the Commonwealth aged community care, Medicare Benefits Schedule and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme datasets to the core state health data. She later worked as a Project Officer, facilitating project applications for linked data and liaising with data custodians and ethics bodies for the release of requested data. For the dissertation component of her MPH, Emma identified and collated the research outputs of studies using linked health data provided by the WA Data Linkage Unit from 1995-2003. Studies that influenced health policy and clinical practice in WA and beyond were identified.
In 2006, Emma was awarded the Fay Gale Fellowship and travelled to and worked with six of the major data linkage centres in Canada and the UK, and presented her findings to the World Health Organisation in Geneva. Her current work is focused on the public good of health data linkages and the establishment of an international health data linkage network.
Additionally, Emma is undertaking a PhD entitled the Australian National Surveillance System for Animal Health. The purpose of the study is to enhance Australia’s capacity to provide timely information on animal health status by using existing animal health data collections in a more efficient and effective way. Emma is developing a national system for the collection, storage, linkage, analysis and reporting of animal health information.
Professor D’Arcy Holman MBBS MPH(Harv.) PhD GCLaw GAICD FACE FPHAA FAFPHM FAIM
Chair of Public Health
Organisation: The University of Western Australia
Country: Australia
Professor Holman holds the Foundation Chair in Public Health at UWA. He instigated and led the WA Data Linkage Project for the first 12 years of its history. At that time he founded the UWA Centre for Health Services Research and hosted the First Australian Conference on Record Linkage and Health Research. With Dr John Bass, he brokered the first cross-jurisdictional linkage of Commonwealth and State health data to provide a comprehensive picture of Australian health system performance. He also instigated the Family Connections genealogical database, established the Data Linkage Australia Centre of Excellence and played a role in securing the Australian Government’s decision to fund a national data linkage system.
Professor Holman frequently presents national and international short courses on the analysis of linked health data. His publications number over 400 and there are many examples of the work of his research team informing health policy, clinical guidelines, new programs and new laws. He is nearing completion of a graduate law degree. He has received the Centenary Medal of Australia for his voluntary services to community organisations and was the 2006 recipient of the Sydney Sax Public Health Medal, Australia’s highest professional award for lifetime achievement in his field.
Meeting Host
Peter Knight
NHS Connecting for Health - Group Programme Director
Organisation: NHS UK
Country: United Kingdom
Peter Knight is the Programme Director of NHS Connecting for Health’s Research Capability Programme.
Peter joined the NHS Connecting for Health from Winchester and Eastleigh Health NHS Trust, where he was Managing Director of Clinical Support Services and Asset Management.
Peter helped put the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust on the map, as one of the first to trusts to switch over to the NHS Care Records Service whilst implementing PACS at the same time.
As the Senior Responsible Owner for the deployment, Peter was accountable to three Trust Boards and a variety of stakeholders for the delivery of the service and organisational change. The implementation went as expected and the Trusts are operational with the new services.
Peter’s other responsibilities at Winchester and Eastleigh Health NHS Trust included the management of clinical supporting services (i.e. radiology, pathology and pharmacy), which resulted in creating a collaboration between Winchester and a neighbouring trust, in response to the Carter report on the networking of pathology services.
Prior to joining Winchester and Eastleigh Health NHS Trust, Peter worked for the NHS Information Authority at the very inception of the National Programme for Information Technology.
Peter has also worked for private sector companies in the technology arena (such as Microsoft and ICL) and was responsible for programme management of local government re-organisation and then appointed as a deputy chief officer at Isle of White Unitary Authority.
Peter has extensive experience in the commercial sphere, including deal structuring and leading complex outsourcing contracts negotiations for the public sector.
He led the outsourcing of the Financial Services and Payroll services on behalf of 17 NHS trusts in South Central to NHS Shared Business Services, which was completed as part of the Department of Health’s procurement of supporting services.
Peter has also been involved in the successful public consultation about changes to services at a community hospital site at Andover War Memorial. He was seconded by the Department of Health to initiate the infrastructure to set up various inquiries (e.g. Bristol and Shipman).
Although his background is in Information Technology, he has considerable experience in supporting organisational change and complex programme management, including local government re-organisation in the late 80s and early 90s.
Participants
Dr Martin Bardsley PhD MFPH
Head of Research
Organisation: The Nuffield Trust
Country: United Kingdom
Martin is an experienced heath service analyst and researcher. Before joining the Trust he worked for the Healthcare Commission leading a team developing and implementing approaches to the use of information for risk based regulation. This work impacted on a number of areas of work across the Commission including the assessment of core standards, topic based reviews and in support of investigations. He was also one of the key architects of the Annual Health Check that emerged in 2005 as a replacement for star ratings. Martin had also spent 3 years at CHI as an Assistant Director in Research and Information where he had helped shape the approach to analysis of qualitative information.
Prior to working as a regulator Martin led the Health of Londoners Project - a public information group working for all London’s health authorities and a precursor to the London Health Observatory. Over a periods of 6 years the project produced a variety of reports and analyses of health in the capital - including the first public health report for Greater London. Previously he worked at CASPE research (a DH funded health services research group) where his special interest were in outcome measurement and case mix classification. He was one of the original researchers using DRGs in the UK.
James Boyd BSc (Hons)
Statistician
Organisation: Scottish Government
Country: Scotland
Joined the National Health Service in 1991 and was involved in the development of the ISD record linkage service which adds value to the existing national datasets by relating together health and healthcare activity for the same individual. The linkage service is a unique resource that is used to produce national epidemiological and management information assisting in the monitoring and evaluation of NHS performance.
Moved to work with the Scottish Government in 2007, currently working in the ScotXed partnership programme, which is part of the Scottish Government Education Department. The aim of the ScotXed programme is to exploit education information and support effective policy making in Scottish school education by supporting and promoting effective and secure systems for data exchange and data sharing.
ScotXed has recently embarked on a data matching project to investigate the development of an Education Data Matching System which can deliver high quality information and allow linkage and linked analyses. By developing a robust linkage platform we hope to reduce the burden on data providers and to provide high quality information for National Statistics reporting and educational research.
Prof. Paul Boyle BA (Hons); PhD
Professor of Human Geography and Head of the School of Geography and Geosciences
Organisation: University of St Andrews
Country: Scotland
Paul Boyle is Professor of Human Geography and Head of the School of Geography and Geosciences at the University of St Andrews. He is President of the British Society for Population Studies (BSPS). He also directs the Longitudinal Studies Centre - Scotland (LSCS), which has established and continues to maintain and support the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS), which is one of the world’s largest longitudinal datasets for health and social science research. He is co-Director of the recently funded ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC); co-applicant on the recently.funded ESRC Administrative Data Liaison Service (ADLS); and co-applicant on the Wellcome Trust Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP). Paul has particular expertise in record linkage and the use of routinely collected data in health and social science research.
David Clark BSc
Principal Information Analyst
Organisation: Information Services Division, NHS National Health Services Scotland
Country: Scotland
David Clark is a Principal Information Analyst with the Information Services Division (ISD) of NHS National Services Scotland, where he has worked for the past 13 years. His current role includes managing the Population Health Analysis Team, incorporating the work of the Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke Programme as well as Medical Record Linkage projects funded by the Chief Scientists Office.
David first became involved in probabilistic record linkage in 2001 and has worked on a number of research projects leading to outputs published in peer-reviewed journals. These include:
- Routine linkage of the Scottish Health Surveys to hospital admissions, cancer and mortality.
- A project looking at the association between amniocentesis and congenital clubfoot in children.
- Linkage of police records concerning road traffic accidents with hospital admissions and deaths, in the absence of names, dates of birth and other unique person-identifiers.
Prior to joining ISD, David worked in Research Assistant posts at the Scottish Agricultural College (Veterinary Services) and Newcastle University (Curriculum Evaluation and Management Centre) after graduating with a Statistics degree from Glasgow University.
David Cromwell Phd
Senior Lecturer
Organisation: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
Country: England
After completing a Masters degree in Operational Research, I worked in various health care organisations in the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. I returned to the UK after working for 10 years at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and joined the LSHTM in 2005. My research has revolved around improving the quality and use of information in the delivery of health care. My current position within the LSHTM and the Clinical Effectiveness Unit of The Royal College of Surgeons of England means this general interest now focuses on issues related to evaluating the effectiveness of surgery.
Xinjie Cui BMed. PhD MBA
Director Child and Youth Data Laboratory
Organisation: Alberta Center for Child, Family and Community Research
Country: Canada
Dr. Cui has a strong background in management and health research using administrative data. She worked in the Alberta provincial health ministry for 12 years and has extensive experience in policy relevant research, administrative health data analysis, project development and project management. She led and managed health surveillance projects that have provided evidence and support for policy changes and program development. She chaired the provincial Surveillance Task Group on non-prescription needle use and co-chaired the Information Management Committee for the Alberta Perinatal Health Program. She participated as the Project Lead for the Alberta Child Health Surveillance Report, a flagship surveillance project on children and youth which has been awarded the Premier’s Award of Excellence Gold in 2007. Dr. Cui started her work at the Alberta Center for Child, Family and Community Research as the Inaugural Director of the Child and Youth Data Laboratory (CYDL) in September 2007. In this role, she leads the implementation of the CYDL – a new initiative that is funded and supported by nine child serving provincial ministries in Alberta. Dr. Cui earned her bachelor’s degree in medicine from China. She also has a PhD in psychology and an MBA from the University of Alberta in Canada.
John Frank MD, CCFP, MSc, FRCPC, FCAHS
Director
Organisation: Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy
Country: Scotland
Dr. John Frank trained in Medicine and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Family Medicine at McMaster University, and in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has been Professor at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Public Health Sciences, since 1983. He was the founding Director of Research at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto from 1991 to 1997. In 2000, Dr. Frank was appointed inaugural Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Population and Public Health. In July 2008, he became Director of a new research and knowledge translation Unit, funded by the Medical Research Council and the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy, and holds a Chair at the University of Edinburgh. His research and professional interests concern the determinants of population and individual health status, and especially the causes and prevention of socio-economic gradients in health.
Theo Georghiou MA MSc
Senior Research Analyst
Organisation: The Nuffied Trust
Country: United Kingdom
After studying Physics at Cambridge, Theo worked at the Commission for Health Improvement and the Healthcare Commission before being appointed as an analyst at the King’s Fund. At the Fund he worked with Professor John Billings to develop the PARR (Patients at Risk of Re-hospitalization) tool, now used by over 70% of PCTs in England to forecast which of their patients are at risk of unplanned hospital admission. In September 2008 he began work as a senior research analyst at the Nuffield Trust where his current projects include developing a person-based resource allocation formula for the NHS and a feasibility study for the development of predictive tools in social care.
Ruth Gilbert MB ChB MSc Epidemiology MD
Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, DIrector
Organisation: Centre for Evidence-based Child Health and MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health, Institute of Child Health, University College London
Country: England
Professor Gilbert is a clinically qualified and accredited paediatrician trained in epidemiology. Her research programme involves working with clinicians, laboratory scientists, and health economists to address prognostic, diagnostic, and intervention questions related to screening and other interventions. Her expertise is in the use of evidence synthesis methods, involving systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and modelling, and in the conduct of primary observational studies, controlled trials, and analyses of routinely collected data. Her work aims to integrate all the available evidence to inform decisions about clinical practice and policy. Recent areas of research include antibiotic prescribing in children (using routine primary care datasets), screening for group B streptococcal infection and screening for child abuse in A&E departments. She is currently researching use of routine health care data to provide evidence about predictors and outcomes of child maltreatment. She founded the Centre for Evidence-based Child Health in 1995 at the Institute for Child Health (Great Ormond St) to increase the use of research evidence in clinical and policy decision-making by promoting integration of epidemiological and statistical principles with clinical knowledge, service considerations, and patient preferences.
Professor Leicester Gill
Chief Computer Scientist
Organisation: Unit of Health Care Epidemiology, The University of Oxford
Country: England
Leicester Gill is the chief computer scientist in the Unit of Health-Care Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, at the University of Oxford. His main area of research is in information theory and computational methods, and in particular the manipulation and analysis of large datasets. These studies include the mathematical and statistical methods used in the development of deterministic and probabilistic matching, and the methods of determining suitable match thresholds to minimise both false positives and negatives.
He developed the matching and linking methodologies for files containing hospital discharge and mortality extracts used in the construction of the Oxford Record Linkage Study. Since 1998, the Unit has received national hospital discharge and mortality data containing non-name identifiers only. A 7 year file containing 92 million records has been prepared and it is planned to extend this to a 10 year file during 2009.
Professor Michael Goldacre
Director
Organisation: Unit of Health Care Epidemiology, The University of Oxford
Country: England
Michael Goldacre trained in medicine and, after a period in clinical practice, undertook postgraduate training in public health. For most of his career in public health, he has worked both as an academic and as a health-service public health practitioner. Both in his research and in his service work, he has made extensive use of routine statistical, epidemiological and public health data. One of his particular areas of interest is the ‘added value’ of record linkage. He has worked extensively with data from the Oxford record linkage study. In recent years he and his team have also built English national linked files of HES and mortality data. They are using them for research projects, and, in collaboration with the Public Health Observatories, for the production of atlases of hospitalisation across England (see, for example, http://www.uhce.ox.ac.uk/Epidembase2/). Michael Goldacre is a professor of public health at Oxford University; a consultant in public health to the Department of Health Government Office for South East England; and a scientific advisor to the South East England Public Health Observatory. His interests in health services research also include medical workforce planning and he is Director of the UK Medical Careers Research Group, see http://www.uhce.ox.ac.uk/ukmcrg/
Kevin Greig MSc, BSc
Senior Information Analyst
Organisation: Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland
Country: Scotland
Kevin Greig is an Information Analyst for the Information Services Division of the NHS National Services Scotland, where he has worked for the past 8 years. His current role is within the Maternity and Record Linkage Team.
He has worked on a variety of internal and external data linkage projects. These include:
- Development of a linked maternity database containing mother and baby records.
- Investigating the link between childhood IQ and later life morbidity and mortality.
- Linkage of prison records to GRO Death records to compare prisoner’s mortality with that of the general population.
Prior to joining ISD, Kevin completed an MSc in Operational Research at Strathclyde University and a BSc in Mathematics at St Andrews.
Dr David Henry
CEO
Organisation: Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences
Country: Canada
David Henry has been CEO of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Canada since October 2007. Prior to that he was Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Newcastle Australia.
ICES is an independent prescribed entity that holds and links health and other records on behalf of the 12.2 million inhabitants of Ontario. The Institute has a long record of carrying out health services population and clinical research using linked files. Dr Henry has been extensively involved in the pharmaceutical evaluation and policy in Australia and with the WHO.
Dr Phil Hider MB ChB, MPH, MMedSCi(Clin Epi), PGradCertQIHC, MRNZCGP, FAFPHM(RACP)
Senior Lecturer in Clinical Epidemiology
Organisation: Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, Christchurch
Country: New Zealand
Dr Hider is a lead investigator with a consortium of academics from three Universities(Auckland, Otago and Victoria), lead by Prof Peter Davis, working on a major project funded by the New Zealand Health Research Council to develop a new data linkage facility with the assistance of the New Zealand Health Information Service of the Ministry of Health. The facility will include a range of health and other databases and will provide services for a range of organisations as well as undertake research in key quality improvement areas such as assessing the performance of hospitals, surgical care and the safety of new interventions, devices and medications.
Dr Hider background is a public health physician and senior lecturer in clinical epidemiology at the University of Otago. He has additional qualifications in his specialist areas of evidence-based medicine, patient safety and health services quality improvement. He teaches undergraduate medical students and postgraduate health professionals in a number of University centres. Dr Hider has undertaken a range of quality improvement research and service development projects in collaboration with academic, regional and national health service providers and government organisations in New Zealand and other countries. He is a member of the Australasian Association for Quality in Health Care and the International Society for Quality in Health Care
Professor Louisa Jorm
Organisation: Centre for Health Record Linkage New South Wales
Country: Australia
Louisa Jorm is the Foundation Professor of Population Health at the University of Western Sydney. She also holds the part-time position of Research Director at the Sax Institute. She is an epidemiologist who prior to taking up her current post in April 2007, spent more than 15 years in senior positions in public health services and administration, including 10 years as the Director of the Centre for Epidemiology and Research in the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Health. Under her direction, the Centre grew to be the pre-eminent unit of its type in Australia, and a national leader in areas including use, analysis and reporting of routinely collected health data and complex linked health datasets. Professor Jorm’s national leadership was recognized by her appointment as chair of the expert advisory group to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) data linkage capability and as member of the Health Expert Advisory Group for the revision of the NCRIS roadmap.
Professor Jorm’s areas of expertise include epidemiologic methods, data linkage, use, analysis and interpretation of large administrative data sets population health surveillance, health survey methods, public health information systems, and facilitating the policy and practice uptake of research. She is an investigator in the NSW Health Outcomes Research and Outcomes Network (HERON) project, which has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council to build methods and capacity for the analysis of routinely-collected population health datasets.
In her role at the Sax Institute, Professor Jorm is part of the team implementing the 45 and Up Study, Australia’s largest study of healthy ageing, which includes 250,000 participants aged 45 years and over from across NSW.
Albert King BSc (Hons)
Professional Services Manager
Organisation: Scottish Government
Country: Scotland
Albert is responsible for ICT at ScotXed, a unit in the Scottish Government. The aim of the ScotXed programme is to exploit education information and support effective policy making in Scottish school education by developing, supporting and promoting effective and secure systems for data exchange and data sharing.
ScotXed has recently embarked on a data matching project to develop an Education Data Matching System which can deliver high quality information and allow linkage and linked analyses. By developing a robust linkage platform ScotXed hope to reduce the burden on data providers and to provide high quality information for National Statistics reporting and educational research.
Previously, Albert has held a number of technical and management positions within IT organisations operating in financial services, healthcare and retail sectors.
Professor Nick de Klerk PhD
Head of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics
Organisation: Telethon Institute of Child Health Research
Country: Australia
Professor Nicholas de Klerk leads the Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Genetic Epidemiology Division in the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Subiaco, Western Australia. Before that, he coordinated the Occupational Respiratory Epidemiology Group in the Department of Public Health at the University of Western Australia and has over 30 years experience in biostatistics and epidemiology. He has published widely in the areas of occupational respiratory disease (particularly asbestos and mesothelioma), cancer epidemiology, child health, and biostatistics, and is a co-author on over 250 peer-reviewed publications.
He has been a member of various state and national health advisory committees including the NH&MRC New Program Grants Committee, the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council, and the Australian Working Group developing Radiation Protection Standard for Exposure to Extra Low Frequency Electro-Magnetic Fields. He has also been an international advisor to the World Health Organisation on vaccine safety and to the World Trade Organisation and Health Canada on the risks of chrysotile asbestos. His particular interests are in biostatistics, environmental, occupational, respiratory, genetic and nutritional epidemiology, record linkage, study design, clinical trials, and exposure and disease risk modelling.
Professor Lisa Lix PhD P.Stat
Associate Professor & Centennial Chair
Organisation: School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan
Country: Canada
Dr. Lisa Lix is Associate Professor and Centennial Chair in the School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan. Lisa received her PhD (Interdisciplinary Studies: Statistics, Psychology, Human Ecology) from the University of Manitoba in 1995. She has served as a member of the Board of the Statistical Society of Canada since 2005.
Her current research interests include methods for chronic disease case ascertainment using administrative health data, quality of administrative data, and methods for the analysis of longitudinal quality of life data. Lisa is currently involved in a number of Canadian interdisciplinary and multi-centre projects about population health, health services utilization, and the association between chronic disease and quality of life.
Prior to joining the University of Saskatchewan, Lisa served as Associate Director, Repository at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (2006 - 2008) and Director of the Biostatistical Consulting Unit at the University of Manitoba (2005 - 2008).
Dr Patricia McGettigan BSc (Pharmacy), MD, FRCPI, FRACP
Clinical Pharmacologist & Senior Lecturer
Organisation: Hull York Medical School
Country: England
Patricia Mc Gettigan is a Clinical Pharmacologist and Senior Lecturer in Medicine at Hull York Medical School. Her research includes investigation of drug side effects, in particular those associated with the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Recent work includes the use of pharmaceutical claims data to estimate co-prescribing of serotonergic medicines among Australian veterans. She is experienced in drug evaluation and while working in Australia was a member of the Economics Sub-Committee of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.
Kimberlyn McGrail, MPH PhD
Assistant Professor
Organisation: School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia Faculty, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, University of British Columbia Scientific Advisor, Population Data BC Canada Canada
Country: Canada
Kim McGrail’s research interests are in the personal, economic and social factors that produce health at an individual and population level, and the role of the health care system in that process. Specific areas of interest are in equity of health care services use and financing, use of health and social services among the elderly, and improving data collection and analysis of outcomes of health care services. She is a senior researcher with Statistics Canada, and is a consultant to the Health Council of Canada on a program of research looking at “value for money” in health care.
Kim is interested in advancing research capabilities by improving access to research data, and in particular data from multiple sources that are linked together. She is Scientific Advisor for Population Data BC, which is building data linkage capacity as well as innovative resources and supports for researchers. She is an external member of the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research Advisory Board’s working group on health information.
She earned her PhD in health care and epidemiology from the University of British Columbia, and received an undergraduate business degree and a master’s in public health from the University of Michigan.
Professor Jan van der Meulen PhD FFPH
Professor of Clinicial Epidemiology
Organisation: Health Services Research Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Country: United Kingdom
Professor of Clinical Epidemiology in the Health Services Research Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Director of the Clinical Effectiveness Unit of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; Honorary Director of the Office for Research and Clinical Audit of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists; and Honorary Consultant in Public Health NHS London.
He studied medicine at the University of Groningen. In 1989 he completed a PhD thesis in medical physics at the University of Utrecht.
He has worked since 1990 as a clinical epidemiologist in the Centre for Clinical Decision Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam (until 1993) and the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam (until 1998). His main field of interest is the development and application of epidemiological, statistical and decision-analytical techniques to study effectiveness and quality of care in surgical practice.
Carole Morris
Manager
Organisation: Information Statistics Division, NHS Scotland
Country: Scotland
Carole Morris is a Principal Information Analyst at Information Service Division (ISD), NHS Scotland, where she is responsible for the managing teams of analysts involved in record linkage, maternity and neonatal data. With over 10 years experience analysing health data for NHS Scotland, she has worked her way up from an Information Analyst at a Lothian NHS Board in Edinburgh before moving over to ISD 2 years ago. She has an Honours Degree in Maths, Statistics and Management Science from Strathclyde University, Glasgow and Postgraduate Diploma in Health Economics.
Professor Tom Noseworthy
Head Department of Community Health Sciences,The Centre for Health and Policy Studies
Organisation: University of Calgary
Country: Canada
Jillian Oderkirk
Director
Organisation: Health Information & Research Division, StatsCan
Country: Canada
Jillian Oderkirk is responsible for Statistics Canada’s program of analysis and dissemination of population health and health system information, including publication of the peer-reviewed journal Health Reports. Our research program explores social determinants of health and inequalities, direct measures of health, access to health services, health outcomes of care and projections of future burden of disease. Our division has a program of record linkage based analytical work including the research agenda of the Longitudinal Health and Administrative Data Initiative (LHAD) and the Census-Mortality Linkage Study. The LHAD initiative is a partnership among provincial health ministries, vital statistics registrars, cancer registrars, the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada to enable pan-Canadian research involving the linkage of health care administrative data to vital events data, cancer data and population health surveys. Jillian was a negotiator for Statistics Canada to develop the LHAD Initiative and represents Statistics Canada on the UN Taskforce on Data Integration to establish best practices for record linkage approval among statistical agencies. Jillian joined Statistics Canada in 1989 and has lead statistical and research programs in Statistics Canada’s health, education and justice areas for the past eight years. Jillian has a Masters Degree in Economics from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Hude Quan, MD PhD
Associate Professor Department of Community Health Sciences,
Organisation: The Centre for Health and Policy Studies, University of Calgary Canada
Country: Canada
Dr. Quan completed his training in medicine and public health at Harbin Medical University in China, international public health at the University of London, England and PhD in epidemiology at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Dr. Quan is an associated professor at the Centre for Health and Policy Studies and Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary. His research focus is in two related areas: 1) issues of methodology in health services research for health researchers, and 2) applied health services research in quality of care and surveillance for policy-makers and health care providers. Dr Quan’s methodology research focuses on understanding administrative data collection method and definition of each element in the databases, determining whether the data are valid and able to address the research questions of interest, and generating a valid method of analysis. In the applied study area, his research mainly focuses on ethnic diversity in care and surveillance of hypertension incidence, prevalence, management, resource use and outcomes using administrative data.
Dr. Quan has published over 100 papers at the peer reviewed journals and holds several Canada national research grants in these areas. Dr Quan is teaching graduate course of ‘Administrative Data Analysis Methodology’ and co-chairing International Methodology Consortium for Coded Health Information (www.IMECCHI.org). Recently, Dr Quan received the Cochrane Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Research from Faculty of Medicine, the University of Calgary.
Dr. Leslie Roos PhD
Distinguished Professor
Organisation: Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba
Founding Director and Senior Research Scientist, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy
Country: Canada
Dr. Leslie Roos graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with awards from the National Science Foundation and Social Science Research Council. After academic appointments at Brandeis and Northwestern Universities, Dr. Roos came to the Faculty of Administrative Studies (now the Asper School of Business) in 1973 and moved to the Faculty of Medicine in 1990. He has received awards from the University of Manitoba for research excellence, outreach, and graduate student mentorship. He was a co-founder of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. He was named a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba in 2006.
For almost 30 years Dr. Roos has worked to create an information-rich environment in Manitoba to facilitate the study of health and health care. His leadership in developing the Concept Dictionary—a web-based systematic approach to sharing working knowledge—was recognized by the Lupina Foundation with a five year $625,000 award. With approximately 50,000 hits per month from several thousand investigators/students worldwide, Dr. Roos has put the University of Manitoba at the forefront of research knowledge transfer.
Dr. Roos has received over 20 million dollars in research support (several grants have been in collaboration with researchers based across Canada as well as several US universities), and has been invited to venues as diverse as Spain, Australia, University of Wisconsin, and McGill to give short courses on his work.
Dr. Roos’ substantive contributions include a number of papers comparing health and health care in Canada and the United States, looking at how socioeconomic status affects Manitoban’s access to health care, and analyzing alternative approaches to funding Canadian Medicare. Dr. Roos’ studies have helped transform research approaches in health services, health policy, and population health. Recent papers expand the focus of his work across the fields of epidemiology, economics, and sociology.
Dr. Roos’ has published approximately 200 peer-reviewed papers and 3 books. His intellectual contributions have been recognized nationally and internationally. In 2004, Dr. Roos was honored as a “Highly Cited Investigator” by the Institute of Scientific Information. Researchers world-wide have cited his published papers almost 4000 times, the highest number of citations noted for any Canadian social scientist.
Dr. Roos held a Career Scientist Award from the National Health Research and Development Program for over twenty years and was an Associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He was the first Canadian Fellow of the Association for Health Services Research. His work contributed substantially to the Manitoba Centre’s receipt of the 2001 Health Services Research Advancement Award from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation and the 2005 Regional Knowledge Translation award from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
Professor Noralou Roos CM, PhD
Organisation: Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba
Founding Director and Senior Research Scientist, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy
Country: Canada
Noralou Roos was the founding director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and led the creation of a population database for understanding why some people are healthy and others are not. She received CFI funding to create Canada’s first data laboratory, containing population based data on health, education and social services and held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. Citations to Dr. Roos’ work place her among the top 100 Canadian scientists according to The Institute of Scientific Information. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s National Forum on Health, the Interim Governing Council setting up the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, received the Order of Canada and has recently joined the Board of the United Way. She currently leads the Canadian Drug Policy Development Coalition, working with Health Canada and the provinces to establish The Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network. She has also been working with community groups, business and government to bring research on At-Risk kids to the policy table.
Professor James B. Semmens (Dip Ed, MSc, PhD)
Organisation: Centre for Population Health Research, Curtin University of Technology
Country: Australia
Prof. James Semmens is the Director of the Centre for Population Health Research at Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. His research interests include health services research evaluation; patient safety; clinical accountability; evaluation of procedural care; injury research- including burns injury, sexual assault and road injury; chronic diseases; pharmaco-epidemiology and genomics. An important feature of his research program is the use of population-based record linkage of State and Commonwealth health data. The population-based research program can be summarised in two broad themes. The first focuses on health conditions that are important by reason of their frequency, their contribution to mortality or disability, the scope they offer for intervention, best practice treatment pathways and the level of health resources they consume. The second focuses on a whole-of-population approach to research to avoid the selection and referral biases that may affect studies based in single institutions. The results will be used to advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations in a country that prides itself on universal access to high quality health services. His research output includes 364 scientific works including 126 scientific papers, 12 book chapters and 208 presentations at state, national and international forums. He has contributed to the provision of long-term research grants totalling around $21.5 million. In recognition of his work, he has received three awards: New Independent Medical Researcher Award (2001), the inaugural WA Safety and Quality in Health Care Award for the Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality (2003), and The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Medal for his contribution to surgical care in Australia (2008).
Dr Merran Smith BSc, MSc, BA, PhD, Post Grad Dip Business
Director, Health Information Partnerships
Organisation: Western Australia Department of Health
Country: Australia
Dr Smith is a Director in the WA Department of Health’s Health Information Division. She has been responsible for management and development of the Department’s extensive population health data collections for more than 10 years and has had a leading role in development of WA’s linked health data assets. These include linkages with data held by other WA human services agencies and by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. She has had a leading role in the development of agreements and other arrangements related to cross-agency information exchange using privacy preserving protocols, as well as in community and consumer engagement around health information issues.
Dr Smith has made a significant contribution to the development of Australia’s national health information infrastructure including as chair of national public health information and statistical information committees. She has led a number of national information initiatives including several related to health data linkage
Australia is investing over $50 million over the next three years to expand health data linkage infrastructure across Australia. Dr Smith has played a leading role in the development of this infrastructure which is known as the Population Health Research Network.
Dr Lee Taylor
Manager
Organisation: Centre for Health Record Linkage New South Wales
Country: Australia
Clare Wotton BSc (Hons) Pharmacology
Organisation: Unit of Health Care Epidemiology, The University of Oxford
Country:England
Mrs Clare Wotton graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Pharmacology in 1998. She spent the next few years working for Oxford University as a Senior Researcher helping to write an evidence-based medicine handbook aimed at student and young doctors, to help them make evidence-based medical decisions under pressure (‘Evidence-based On-call: Acute Medicine’ and ‘Evidence-based On-call: Acute Medicine Pocketbook’, Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh) . She joined the Unit of Health Care Epidemiology, Oxford University in 2001 as a Research Officer where she uses the Oxford Record Linkage Study in the research of disease associations (recently publications: ‘Associations between infectious mononucleosis and cancer: record-linkage studies’, ‘Liver cirrhosis, other liver diseases, pancreatitis and subsequent cancer: record linkage study.’, ‘Cancer in patients with ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and coeliac disease: record linkage study.’, ‘Cancer in people with depression or anxiety: record-linkage study.’ ). She also uses the ORLS perinatal data to investigate whether certain maternal characteristics and/or characteristics of the pregnancy or the infant affect the occurrence of subsequent disease, e.g. asthma, meningitis, cancer.
