Population Health Research Net

The PHRN Centre for Data Linkage (CDL) team consists of a range of data linkage and IT specialists. We invite you to learn more about the people behind the success of the CDL.

Professor James Semmens (Project Leader)
Professor Semmens is the inaugural Chair of Population Health Research in the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI). He has established a reputation as a research leader for his contribution to the use of record linked health data to support health services research, health informatics, patient safety, clinical accountability, healthcare utilisation and the evaluation of outcomes of procedural care. He established the Centre for Population Health Research (CPHR) in 2006 which uses four core infrastructure methodologies of epidemiology, biostatistics, data linkage and health economics to support eight research programs - Health Informatics; Patient Care; Health Services Research; Injury Research (interpersonal violence including sexual assault, burns and road safety); Indigenous Health; Ageing; Genomics and Information System Development. The CPHR supports research through the creation and maintenance of data and technical infrastructure, facilitation of a network of collaborators, and provision of training opportunities. A strong emphasis is on the translation of output to healthcare policy, planning, practice and evaluation.

In addition to his Chair position, he is the Director of the Centre for Population Health Research (CPHR); Chair of the Data Linkage Australia Advisory Board (WA Centre of Excellence); Science Director for the CRCSI Spatial Health Program; Program Leader for the Centre for Data Linkage within the NCRIS supported Population Health Research Network; Research Director of the WA Safety and Quality of Surgical Care Project (SQSCP); Co-initiator and Project Manager of the Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality (1998-2005); and WA Project Leader for the NHMRC Partnership Grant to support indigenous health primary care for chronic diseases. He commenced employment at Curtin University in November 2006 prior to which he was employed in the Centre for Health Services Research in the School of Population Health at the University of Western Australia for a period of eleven years, serving as the Director from 2001 to 2007.

His research output (current beginning 2011) includes 443 scientific works: including 184 scientific papers published or 'in press', 246 presentations and has contributed to provision of research grants totalling around $33.3million. The significance of his work has been recognised with five prestigious awards: WA New Independent Medical Researcher Award (2002), Inaugural WA Safety and Quality in Health Care Award (2003), The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Medal (2008), WA Spatial Excellence Award (2010) and the Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Award (October 2010).

Associate Professor James Boyd (Director)
James Boyd joined the National Health Service (Scotland) in 1991.  He 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.

Since re-locating to Perth in April 2009, James has worked at the Centre for Data Linkage (CDL) based in Curtin University.  The CDL are a component of the national Population Health Research Network (PHRN) project. The role of the CDL is to establish a secure data linkage system and to facilitate linkage between jurisdictional datasets, and between these datasets and research datasets using demographic data. The centre provides technical advice and assistance and has recently completed an evaluation of selected data linkage systems and methods.

Research and professional interests include data linkage, epidemiologic methods, use, analysis and interpretation of large administrative data sets, and public health information systems.

Associate Professor Anna Ferrante (Deputy Director)
Anna Ferrante has considerable experience in undertaking criminological and criminal justice related research.  She has conducted research on many issues including drugs and crime, driving and traffic related crime, Aboriginal justice issues, domestic violence, juvenile justice and criminal careers. She has published many research papers and reports and has co-authored two books - one on the measurement of domestic violence and the other on the over-representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system.

A number of Anna's research projects have been collaborative in nature, drawing on the perspectives of multiple disciplines (eg drug research, psychiatry, injury and road accident based research). Many projects have been based on the linkage of intra- and inter-jurisdictional datasets (eg offending+mental illness, offending+road crashes, offending+other criminal justice events). In 1990 Anna developed the INOIS (Integrated Numerical Offender Identification System) Record Linkage system to routinely link offender records throughout the WA criminal justice system. This system led to the development of an integrated, longitudinal offender database, which underpins much of the criminological research conducted by the Crime Research Centre at the University of Western Australia.   

Anna has significant data analysis skills and has expertise in record-linkage, offender tracking and longitudinal criminal career data analysis. In 2009 she was seconded to Curtin University of Technology to establish the Centre for Data Linkage (CDL). 

John Bray (Technical Adviser)
John is an experienced Strategic Planner and Technical Communicator. His professional interests include management of public sector businesses, R&D, and technology commercialisation.

John holds a MSc (Hons) in Biochemistry and started his career as a researcher at the University of Melbourne. He has since held roles in Universities, CSIRO, Management Consulting firms, and the Victorian Government - providing consultancy and advice on strategic planning and commercial management.

Since moving to Perth 4 years ago, John has been working primarily in the Information Technology Sector, designing programs of business and technology change. He joined Curtin University at the end of 2009 following a 2 year engagement consulting to the Dept of Health eHealthWA Program. His time is split 50/50 between the Centre for Data Linkage, and the Curtin IT Services (CITS) Future Technologies Group.

Sean Randall (Principal Linkage Officer)
Sean joined the Centre for Data Linkage in June 2010. Sean completed his BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Psychology in 2008 at the University of Sydney. Since then, he has worked as a researcher in audiology at Macquarie University, as well as an analyst at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Tony O'Shea (IT Infrastructure Consultant)
Tony is an IT Infrastructure Consultant within the Centre for Data Linkage. He has worked in the Information Technology field of Systems and Database infrastructure design and support for over 25 years.  

He has worked for a number of major hardware and software manufacturers, and had worked in London for a number of Global Investment Banks implementing and supporting equities, derivative and fixed income trading platforms.

Tony has been involved in designing and presenting Unix System Administration/Security training courses and he also lectures for the Curtin School of Information Systems on Network Security for post graduate students.

Margo Gillies (Project Co-ordinator)
Margo joined the Centre for Data Linkage in September 2010 having worked in various posts within Curtin University. Before relocating to Perth in April 2009, Margo had previously been employed as Staff Development Manager with the Information Services Division (ISD), part of the National Health Service in Edinburgh, Scotland.  

Margo's role at ISD was to provide training and development opportunities ensuring that all of ISD's 500+ staff members had the skills and competencies to deliver the organisational targets and objectives. This task was met by developing and publishing the annual ISD Training Guide which delivered generic and specialist training programmes.

Dr Maxine Croft (Consultant)
Maxine Croft is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. Her background is in computing in a biological context and during her PhD (Population Health) she used probabilistic record linkage to create the first maternally linked sibships within the Maternal and Child Health Research Database. This work formed the basis of the WA Twin Child Health Study, now the WA Twin Registry.  In addition to her work at UWA Maxine's career has included periods in State and Federal public service, commercial market research and, since 1994, as the owner of a consultancy company. Her company, Maximal Computer Solutions specialises in record linkage and the design and management of health, justice and biological databases. Maxine is a consultant for State, National and International level projects.