Epidemiological research is increasingly drawing upon the resources of routinely collected data to understand complex health outcomes across the life-course. In this mini-symposium, four speakers will discuss their experiences with data linkage. These speakers will offer a range of perspectives, from the role of data custodian, to the young researcher starting a linkage study to seasoned veterans who have already published extensively using linked data.
Speakers:
Ms Jennifer MacLachlan, WHO Collaborating Centre for Hepatitis B
Jennifer MacLachlan is an epidemiologist with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Hepatitis B, The Doherty Institute. Her work primarily focuses on estimating the burden of chronic viral hepatitis in Australia and measuring access to prevention, care and treatment among those affected. Currently conducting the initial phases of a linkage project, which will bring together Victorian notifications, hospitalisation and cancer data with national Medicare service and prescribing data. Will discuss the steps so far and issues surrounding linkage of national datasets.
Dr David Burgner, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
Professor David Burgner is a paediatric infectious diseases clinician scientist. He completed his PhD on susceptibility to severe malaria at Oxford University in the UK and subsequently trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital and St Mary's Hospital/Imperial College, London. He was the first and only infectious diseases paediatrician in Western Australia from 2002 until 2010, when he relocated to Melbourne to join the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. He is currently a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow, an honorary (NHFA) Future Leader Fellow, a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University, and a paediatric infectious diseases consultant at Monash Children's Hospital. David will present his WA data linkage project which showed an increased risk of heart disease in people who suffered serious infections as children. David will focus on describing the process of using both Australian WA data and Danish bought data.
Prof Belinda Gabbe, Monash University
Belinda Gabbe is the Head of the Pre-Hospital, Emergency and Trauma Research Unit in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. She is an injury epidemiologist with a clinical background in physiotherapy. Belinda is a Chief Investigator of the Victorian State Trauma Registry, Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry, and the Burns Registry of Australia and New Zealand. Her research focuses on the evaluation of trauma systems, trauma system improvements and measuring the burden of injury. A particular research focus is quantifying the outcomes of non-fatal injury and improving measurement of non-fatal injury burden. Belinda has experience with projects linking registry and administrative data, as well as projects with international data. She will provide some key hints about linking data, highlight the use of international data, along with an example from a project. Belinda will highlight the registries available in DEPM for data linkage
Mark Lucas, Cancer 2015 Project
Mark Lucas has 19 years’ technical experience working with Data, Databases and applications in a number of organisations that deal with public health-related subject matter as well as corporate infrastructure. He is currently working at Monash University on the Cancer 2015 project, where he maintains the core registry database and application for the project. He provides support to the clinical nurses and pathologists that use the system, and imports data and provides linkages to other data sets. Mark will highlight the aims of the Cancer 2015 project, give a broad indication of where the project is at now, describe the difficulties encountered in getting the project setup and keeping it running and show a few examples of what you can do with the linked up data.
