The Methods and Implementation Support for Clinical and Health (MISCH) research Hub seeks to facilitate and collaborate to ensure researchers have access to the core research methods of Biostatistics, Co-Design and Implementation Effectiveness, Clinical Trials, Health Economics, and Health Informatics. These areas are a necessity for good research design and governance in order to generate research findings that lead to improved health care and informed health service reform.
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Biostatistics
Biostatistics underpins the sound application of statistical methods in clinical research.
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Health Economics
Economic evaluation is widely used to assess many new health care interventions and technologies.
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Health Informatics (REDCap)
Health Informatics ensures the optimal use of information, including REDCap database support to capture health and clinical data.
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Clinical Trials
Mutually beneficial relationships and resources allow the University and partners to work together, sharing resources and knowledge.
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Co-Design and Implementation Effectiveness
Incorporating both implementation and co-design capabilities to explore factors and conditions that impact on effectiveness, uptake and sustainability, and outcomes in clinical trials
MISCH can provide collaborative Biostatistics, Co-Design and Implementation Effectiveness, Clinical Trials, Health Economics, and Health Informatics support within departmental panel grant pitch reviews, research and grant development, analysis, and publication. Contact us through the MISCH project form, and review our collaboration agreement. For other queries email misch-info@unimelb.edu.au.
On this page:
Director
 | Professor Julie SimpsonDirector of MISCH Julie has over 20 years experience as a biostatistician contributing to clinical and population health research. Previously she has worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, Mahidol-Oxford Research Programme in Thailand, University of Aberdeen, and Cancer Council of Victoria. Her main research areas are: the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational cohorts. Julie is Head of the Biostatistics Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (Leadership L1, 2021-5). |
Professional Staff
 | Ms Shaie O'BrienMISCH Manager Shaie is the MISCH Manager. With her background in both research administration and clinical trial coordination, Shaie has a strong track record in project management, ethics and governance. |
 | Ms An NguyenMISCH Operations Manager An is the MISCH Operations Manager. She has extensive experience in financial accounting, project financial management and audit. An enjoys working with numbers and providing support to staff |
Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology
| Professor Julie SimpsonDirector of MISCH Julie has over 20 years experience as a biostatistician contributing to clinical and population health research. Previously she has worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, Mahidol-Oxford Research Programme in Thailand, University of Aberdeen, and Cancer Council of Victoria. Her main research areas are: the integration of biostatistics and mathematical modelling to improve the control of infectious diseases and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational cohorts. Julie is Head of the Biostatistics Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant (Leadership L1, 2021-5). |
 | Ms Sabine BraatDeputy Head of MISCH Biostatistics Sabine completed her postgraduate training in Belgium (Master of Science in Biostatistics preceded by Master in Applied Mathematics) following undergraduate study in mathematics. She has over 15 years’ experience working as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands where she contributed to the design, analysis and reporting of clinical trials ranging from the early clinical phases (Phase II) to post-marketing (Phase IV) in a range of medical areas. |
 | Professor Mark JenkinsMark is the Director of the Centre for Epidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Population & Global Health, and he is a Group leader in the Centre for Cancer Research. He is an epidemiologist with 20 years' experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of studies examining the role of genetic and environmental causes of cancer, and the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer, including research on the increase in screening participation. |
 | Dr Karen LambKaren has a BSc (Hons) in Statistics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a PhD in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland where her research focused on the mathematical and statistical modelling of pneumococcal carriage following vaccine intervention. Karen has been employed as a biostatistician in public health research for more than 10 years. She has previously worked at the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne and the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University in Melbourne. She has experience providing statistical support in the design, analysis and reporting of observational studies, quasi-experimental studies and randomised controlled trials. |
 | Dr Emily KarahaliosEmily completed her Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, Canada, and Master of Public Health and PhD in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne. Emily is a Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, the University of Melbourne and is the coordinator for the Master of Biostatistics. Emily’s expertise is in the statistical methods for systematic reviews (i.e. pairwise and network meta-analysis). She is a member of Cochrane and statistical editor for the Cochrane Incontinence Group. She has previously worked in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, as clinical biostatistician at Western Health, and at Cancer Council of Victoria. |
 | Dr Anurika de SilvaAnurika has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Statistics (Hons) from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her PhD involved the evaluation of multiple imputation methods for handling missing longitudinal data. She has worked in public health research for 2 years and her expertise is in the statistical analyses of randomised controlled trials and observational studies. She is also currently the course coordinator for the Master of Public Health course on Linear and Logistic Regression. Previously, she has worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. |
 | Dr Digsu KoyeDigsu is a clinical epidemiologist with interest in big data analyses, data linkage and design of observational studies in the fields of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He completed his PhD at Monash University in 2018. Prior to this, he had been teaching and conducting research at the Institute of Public Health of the University of Gondar in Ethiopia for 6 years. Digsu completed his undergraduate degree in Public Health, with an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, at the University of Gondar. Currently, he is conducting clinical epidemiological research in the fields of metabolic diseases using large patient-level electronic medical records and administrative data. |
 | Ms Vanessa Pac SooVanessa is a Research Fellow in Biostatistics. She completed a Bachelor of Business from Monash University and Master of Statistics and Operations Research from RMIT University. She is currently studying the Master of Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne (anticipated completion mid-2021). At MISCH, she contributes biostatistical expertise to the design, analysis and reporting of randomised trials and observational studies. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, Vanessa worked as a data analyst and public health officer. |
 | Dr Rob MaharRobert Mahar received a PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Melbourne in 2019 following his completion of a Master of Biostatistics at the University of Queensland in 2014. He is a statistician with a research focus on applied Bayesian methods, and novel experimental design and analysis, particularly for adaptive clinical trials and sequentially multiple assignment randomised trials. His doctoral research focused on developing new models of lung function from multiple-breath washout and complex tidal flow waveform data, with an emphasis on computational Bayesian and spectral analytical methods. Prior to undertaking his graduate studies, he was a professional economist with a focus on both domestic and international housing and retail markets. |
Affiliates
 | Professor Leonid ChurilovBiostatistics Lead at Austin Hospital Leonid is an internationally recognized expert in the use of health analytics and statistical modelling for decision support in clinical and health care systems. He is an Associate Editor of the “Operations Research for Health Care” and an Editorial Board member for four other journals. He contributes biostatistical, health analytics, and decision modelling expertise to several large international clinical trials and to a number of smaller pre-clinical, clinical, imaging, and service evaluation studies in the areas of general neurology, stroke, epilepsy, spinal cord injury, diabetes, gynaecology, and anaesthesia. |
 | Ms Ximena CamachoXimena has extensive experience using linked health administrative databases to generate policy-relevant evidence. She has worked across a variety of fields including cancer, aging and cardiovascular studies, and her current work is focused on using real-world data to assess medicines safety. Ximena collaborates regularly with clinical, government and academic partners and has both local and international networks. She has held former roles with the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health (University of Melbourne) and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (Canada’s largest independent steward of linked population health data). |
 | Dr Hannah JonesComing soon |
 | Associate Professor Patty ChondrosPatty is a biostatistician specialising in primary care and health services research. She is the lead biostatistician within Primary Clinical Trials Unit based at the Department of General Practice. As lead biostatistician she provides statistical leadership and expertise to support the department’s research programs, including grants and publications, and to advance the methodological and statistical skills and capacity of researchers and research higher degree students. Her research interests include the design and analysis of randomised controlled trials, particularly cluster randomised and stepped wedge designs. |
Health Economics and Health Services Research
 | Dr An Duy TranMISCH Senior Health Economics Lead An is a Senior Research Fellow at the Health Economics Unit, Centre for Health Policy, University of Melbourne. He has over 10 years of experience working in health economics and economic evaluation of healthcare interventions. Before joining the University of Melbourne in October 2016, he was a Post-doc Researcher and Assistant Professor in Health Technology Assessment at the Maastricht University and Utrecht University in The Netherlands. His expertise includes design of economic evaluation studies, statistical analyses of costs and health outcomes, development of decision-analytic models for cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses, and development of patient-level simulation models to estimate the long-term impact of treatment strategies on health outcomes and healthcare resource utilisation in patients with chronic diseases. |
 | Associate Professor Kim DalzielKim is Head of the Health Economics Unit of 20 researchers at the University of Melbourne. She was awarded an NHMRC Investigator Award (2021-25) and is a Dame Kate Campbell Fellow in Research Excellence with the University of Melbourne (2020-24). Kim has skills in leading health economics research, building health economics models, health technology assessment, patient-reported outcomes measurement and health services research. She specialises in child health. She has made significant contributions to the area of economic evaluation alongside paediatric clinical trials. |
 | Mr Patrick AbrahamPatrick is a research assistant within the Health Economics Unit, and the Population Interventions Unit, at the University of Melbourne. He completed a Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne in 2019, specialising in health economics. He has expertise in economic evaluations, as well as cost and health expenditure data analysis. Patrick works with Dr An Duy Tran, to assist in the development of decision-analytic models for cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis. He has a particular interest in economic evaluations in low-and-middle-income settings. |
Health Informatics
 | Associate Professor Douglas Iain Ross BoyleDougie is the Director of the Research Information Technology Unit (R2). Since 2006 Doug has been researching, developing and implementing systems for the ethical acquisition of record-linkable data for audit, research and health surveillance. Consent management, security and privacy-protecting record linkage are key components and research areas. The software systems (GRHANITE™) are now responsible for the largest collections of record-linkable primary care data ever accumulated in Australia. Prior to emigrating from Scotland in 2006, Doug worked in a similar capacity to develop and implement technologies for wide-scale data acquisition. His system SCI-DC Network is internationally recognised and is playing a continuing key role in the support of population-based diabetes health service provision across Scotland. |
 | Mr David Ormiston-SmithDavid provides Health Informatics expertise to MCATS. David has experience with Natural Language Technologies (Python, web, data-mining, nlp) and supports REDCap users. |
Co-Design and Implementation Effectiveness
 | Associate Professor Victoria PalmerVictoria is the Head of the Co-Design Living Labs program and the lead of the Integrated Mental Health Research Program in the Department of General Practice, Melbourne Medical School. The Co-Design Living Labs program supports embedding of lived-experience co-design models in research design through to translation. Established in 2017, membership of the Co-Design Living Lab has grown to more than 2000 people who have lived-experiences of mental health conditions, access services for mental health support and some of whom are carers. Victoria brings mixed-method expertise, implementation science and, qualitative research design and analysis skills across visual, text and computer assisted methods. She was the lead investigator for a world-first of an adapted experience-based co-design method for service improvement in community mental health settings (The CORE Study) and she leads the Assertive Cardiac Care Trial (ACCT) the only Australian primary care randomised controlled trial to address heart health in people living with severe mental illness. |
Clinical Trials
 | Dr Adam DeaneAdam is an Intensivist with research interests including pragmatic clinical trials and outcomes from critical illness. He currently serves as Senior Staff Specialist, Head of Intensive Care Unit Research, and Deputy Director Intensive Care Unit at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. Adam currently holds a Career Development Fellowship (Level 2 clinical) with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). |