I'm a pharmacist and biostatistician with significant experience in the development, implementation and evaluation of data driven interventions for health professionals to improve clinical decision making, leading to better patient outcomes.
Following initial practice as a clinical psychiatric pharmacist, I moved into the domain of 'quality use of medicine' , and spent several years working initially with NPS MedicineWise in Sydney, Australia, and later with Alosa Health in Boston, US; a non-profit affiliated with the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Harvard Medical School. Here, I oversaw the implementation of a multitude of programmes addressing a range of public health issues (e.g., the overuse of antipsychotic medication in nursing homes, the opioid epidemic, and HIV & Hepatitis screening), and programmes aimed at improving the management of conditions commonly seen in primary care. During this time, I became interested in programme evaluation, especially the application of econometrics to evaluate the impact of these interventions, primarily on drug utilisation. My PhD (in Health Policy) further enhanced these skills in evaluation; my thesis was a mixed-methods study which examined the implementation and impact of major reconfiguration of Acute Medicine in Ireland's hospitals.
I have always had a strong interest in the concept of data harmonization, and the application of rigorous methods to capitalize on new and existing data sources. To that end, I am excited to join the PharmaSafe research group at UIO, working with the Nordforsk funded COHERENCE project, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) funded CONSIGN project. The later is a multinational registry study which will use nine data sources across eight European countries to examine COVID-19 infection and medication use in pregnancy, to provide valuable insight into how the disease and currently used treatments impact on the pregnant woman and her infant.