MEET THE TEAM

Professor Timothy F Chen (BPharm, DipHPharm, PhD, FFIP, FPS) is a registered pharmacist and is the Professor of Medication Management, School of Pharmacy, The University of Sydney, where he is Head of Pharmacy Practice and Health Services Research. Tim has experience as a clinical hospital pharmacist (5 years) and as a community pharmacist (10 years P/T). Tim is internationally renowned for strategies designed to reduce medication related harm. Tim’s seminal work in medication review directly informed the Australian Commonwealth Government funded Home Medicines Review programme (MBS item 900). Tim has received Faculty, University and Australian Government awards for teaching, and has supervised 22 PhDs to completion and authored >200 scientific publications. Tim was awarded the APSA Medal in 2021 and has been appointed as a Fellow of the International Pharmaceutical Federation and The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/timothy-chen.html

Carl Schneider BN, BPharm(Hons), PhD, PGCert(HigherEd), FHEA, FFIP is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at The University of Sydney School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Australia Carl has research expertise in optimising patient safety via Quality Use of Medicines, with research outputs spanning pharmacoepidemiology to implementation of health care services through development and implementation of practice guidelines. As a pharmacist and registered nurse, Carl has practiced both in Australia and UK across hospital and community settings. Carl is an associate editor for the Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy journal, Treasurer of the Academic Section of the International Pharmacy Federation (FIP) and is a member of the FIP Technology Forum. Carl completed his PhD in 2011 at the University of Western Australia and now has over 80 career total publications, primarily in the areas of health professional education, social and administrative pharmacy, implementation of health services and is the successful recipient of competitive research funding totalling over AUD$3,500,000. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/carl-schneider.html

Danijela Gnjidic is an Associate Professor at the School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Danijela's research expertise and leadership in quality use of medicines and deprescribing has been recognised by being awarded two National Health and Medical Research Fellowships (Early Career 2012-15; Dementia Leadership, 2017-21). Danijela is an Executive Editor of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, and Chair, Geriatric Pharmacoepidemiology Special Interest Group, International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE), and Past President of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT). https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/danijela-gnjidic.html

Sarah Hilmer AM FAHMS is a Geriatrician and Clinical Pharmacologist working at Royal North Shore Hospital; and Conjoint Professor of Geriatric Pharmacology at the University of Sydney. Her translational research program in Ageing and Pharmacology at the Kolling Institute includes basic, clinical and population studies to understand the effects of medications and of deprescribing in ageing and frailty. Her clinical, research, education and policy work all aim to improve outcomes of medications for older people. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/sarah-hilmer.html

Sasha Bennett is the Executive Officer of NSW Therapeutic Advisory Group (TAG), a not-for-profit organisation promoting quality use of medicines in hospital practice and the wider community. She has been the pharmacist for the St Vincent’s Hospital Campus (NSW) Cardiac Rehabilitation Program for 18 years. Her PhD investigated clinical predictors of heart failure rehospitalisation and death. Her clinical interests include quality use of medicines, disease state management, medication review, health services research, cardiology, aged care, translation of research into practice and quality improvement.

Professor Patanwala is Chair of Clinical Pharmacy and is jointly based at the University of Sydney School of Pharmacy and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH). His research interests include patient safety and comparative effectiveness of medication use in critical care and emergency medicine. He has been involved in international clinical trials and clinical practice guidelines. He serves on the Clinical Trials Sub-Committee for the Sydney Local Health District and Drug Committee for RPAH. He has published 170+ journal articles and book chapters including those in NEJM, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Intensive Care Medicine, and Crit Care Med. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/asad-patanwala.html

Dr Rose Cairns (BPharm PhD) is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Sydney School of Pharmacy, and Director of Research at the New South Wales Poisons Information Centre. She is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow. Her research interests include clinical toxicology, pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacovigilance, and data linkage.

Prof Ian Coombes, BPharm, MSc, PhD, Adv Pharm Pract. Dr Ian Coombes is the Director of Pharmacy at RBWH and Academic Professor School of Pharmacy, University of Queensland. After basic training in NHS and his PhD at UQ investigating systems and education interventions to reduce prescribing errors, he continues to undertake research, supervise, students and publish in the areas of workforce development and expanded models of collaborate pharmacy practice. Ian is passionate about developing a pharmacy workforce fit for purpose bit in Australia and Sri Lanka.

Charles Denaro MBBS (1st Class hons), FRACP, MD (Research), PSM is a general internal medicine specialist physician and clinical pharmacologist. Trained at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane and University of California, San Francisco. Currently is the Director of Internal Medicine & Aged Care, Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine with the University of Queensland. He has a Doctorate in Medicine in Clinical Pharmacology. A member of the Queensland Health Medicines Advisory Committee from 1991 and Chair since 2002. Research interests include health systems, medication optimisation and cost effectiveness. Dr Denaro is the Director of the Anderson-Fabry Disease Assessment & Treatment Service for the state of Queensland and Northern NSW. https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/profile/1138/charles-denaro

Parker Magin is a Conjoint Professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle. His main research interests are the in-consultation clinical and educational experience of GP registrars, TIA and stroke, and medications use in older patients.

Associate Professor Fiona Robinson is head of the General Practice specialty and clinical school at the University of Sydney. She is head of the department of General Practice at RNSH, medical director of the NSLHD Virtual Care Service and member of the SNPHN clinical council. For more than 25 years, Fiona has worked in clinical practice in northern Sydney, with special interests in health promotion, medication safety, patient education, chronic disease prevention and management.

David Lyle is a Public Health Physician who established the first University Department of Rural Health at Broken Hill in 1995. As a rural-based academic researcher David has contributed to the development, implementation and evaluation of health services in both metropolitan and rural NSW for more than 30 years. Dr Denaro is the Director of the Anderson-Fabry Disease Assessment & Treatment Service for the state of Queensland and Northern NSW. https://medical-school.uq.edu.au/profile/1138/charles-denaro

Dr Emily Saurman, PhD is the Senior Research Fellow-Rural Health at the Broken Hill University Department of Rural Health (BHUDRH), University of Sydney and Director of the Remote Health Research Centre. Her expertise is in health services research and evaluation using mixed methods and qualitative study designs with particular focus and interests in access, ethics, and rurality. Recent projects include digital health, palliative care, and primary health care in rural and remote populations.

Dr Karen Luetsch is a pharmacist whose career started as a clinician and health service manager after completion of her PhD. She has worked as an educator, educational designer and team manager on behalf of health services and multiple NGOs in all healthcare settings. Karen has developed, implemented and evaluated programs that improve medication and patient safety with a focus on prescribing and use of medicines. As a Senior Research Fellow at the University of South Australia Karen has been working for the for the ViP bDMARDs Program. She is an experienced qualitative researcher and has specialist skills in realist synthesis and evaluation.

Dr. Kenji Fujita is a postdoctoral research fellow at Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Kolling Institute. Kenji is a Japanese pharmacist with a PhD in pharmacy practice from the University of Sydney. His main role in his current position is to analyse data from the Northern Sydney Local Health District to assess medication management, frailty and outcomes in older inpatients. Kenji has also been appointed as a lead of a working group on guideline and quality indicator in a premier group for pharmacy practice research in Europe, Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe (PCNE).

Dr Joanna C. Moullin (PhD) is a senior research fellow and implementation scientist at Curtin University’s enAble Institute. Dr. Moullin’s research encompasses topics related to conducting implementation research and implementation in practice, aiming to investigate, expedite, and increase the introduction and integration of evidence into practice. In particular, Dr Moullin has extensive knowledge and experience in implementation theory, implementation research methodologies and measurement development. A pharmacist by profession, she now focuses on implementation in a range of diverse clinical and community settings.

Kirsten Howard (BSc (Hons1), MAppSc(Biopharm), MPH, MHlthEc, PhD, FAHMS) is Co-Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics and Professor of Health Economics, in the School of Public Health. She has more than 25 years experience in health economics and health policy research, with a focus on patient and consumer preferences, QOL/wellbeing measurement and economic evaluation. She has worked in diverse public health areas such as cancer screening, falls prevention, chronic kidney disease, organ donation and allocation policy, child quality of life measurement and in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing. She co-leads the NHMRC-funded What Matters 2 Adults (WM2A) and the MRFF-funded What Matters 2 Youth (WM2Y) projects to develop new nationally-relevant preference-based wellbeing measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and youth, and a MRFF implementation study for the What Matters measure (WM2A) in routine PRMs collection in NSW cancer services. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/kirsten-howard.html

Dr Rakhee Raghunandan (BPharm, PGDipClinPharm, PhD) is a health economics research fellow at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Her research focuses on health services research and applied health economics methods to inform decision making. Current research includes evaluating tools used to value health changes in paediatric populations, discrete choice experiments to elicit patient and clinician preferences, and health economic evaluations. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/rakhee-raghunandan.html

I am a post-doctoral biostatistician at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. I specialise in advanced statistical modelling of complex clinical scenarios in people with chronic diseases, with a particular interest in linked data, survival models, multi-state modelling and modelling excess mortality (such as relative survival). My post-doctoral research, for the last 5 years, has focussed on establishing new linked data cohorts and using these to improve the quality and efficiency of health services to translate into better and more equitable outcomes for people with kidney failure and organ transplant recipients. https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/about/our-people/academic-staff/nicole-delamata.html

EXECUTIVE MANAGER, PRIMARY CARE IMPROVEMENT John has a clinical background trained as a nurse, holds Certificates in General and Geriatric Nursing, a Bachelor of Health Science (Nurs) degree as well as a Master of Health Management, in 2003 John undertook a fellows Management Program for Nurse Executives at the University of Pennsylvania. John previously has held a number of senior health management positions, including CEO of Hunter Medicare Local during the transition from Medicare Locals to the Primary Health Network, CEO of a community aged care organisation, John has been a Director of Nursing in the NSW public system in, urban rural and regional health services, in both private and public organisations, in addition to a period as regional manager for Disability Services in the Hunter and Central Coast of NSW. As Director of Primary Care, eHealth and IT at Hunter Medicare Local, John led the team deploying the Primary Care eHealth project in Hunter Valley of NSW, providing support to health providers across the rural and urban parts of the Hunter Medicare Local Regions. In total John has in excess of 40 years’ experience in the public and private health and disability services at an operational and strategic level.

Angela Smith is the Medication Safety Project lead for Brisbane North Primary Health Network. She has experience covering a diverse range of pharmacy services in Australia, Scotland and Tanzania. Angela is an accredited pharmacist and has been conducting Home Medicines Reviews in community and Residential Medication Management Reviews in aged care facilities for twenty years. She has worked as a Senior Pharmacist with the Complex Chronic Disease Team, Queensland Health. Other roles include NHS Primary Care Clinical Pharmacist, Community Pharmacy Management and managing a rural hospital pharmacy in Tanzania (Voluntary Service Overseas). Angela is passionate about quality use of medication and improving medication safety for older people.

Georgette Yassa serves as the Medication Safety Pharmacist at the Sydney North Health Network and holds a position as an examiner for the Pharmacy Board of Australia as well as being an Assessor with the Australian Pharmacy Council. With more than 23 years of experience in Community and Hospital Pharmacy, Georgette has also owned and operated a pharmacy in Sydney for a number of years. Georgette has been an Accredited Pharmacist for over sixteen years, conducting Medication Reviews both within the community and for insurance companies. Additionally, she has held the Senior Pharmacist role at Claims Pharmacy. Georgette possesses a strong dedication to Pain Management and ensuring medication safety within the community.

Kristy Gambrill (BPharm Hons I) is a registered community pharmacist and the Medication Safety Pharmacist Research Assistant based at the Hunter New England & Central Coast Primary Health Network. She has extensive experience in community pharmacy management and a special interest in health promotion, evidence based practice and the quality use of medicines. Kristy’s honours research project investigated the usage of medications for the treatment of chronic heart failure in older inpatients. She was also awarded the 2013 PSA MIMS NSW Pharmacy Intern of the Year.