ACTA 2025

Our 2025 Clinical Registries Day Speakers

Professor Chris Reid

Christopher Reid is a cardiovascular epidemiologist and clinical trialist with a specific interest in large scale clinical trials, quality improvement and outcomes research. He holds a NHMRC Principal Research Fellowship and has had continual NHMRC research funding since 1997.

He holds Professorial Research Fellow positions at both Curtin and Monash University and is Co-Director of the Monash Centre for Cardiovascular Research and Education in Therapeutics (CCRE) and Director of the Curtin Centre for Clinical Research and Education (CCRE).

Professor Sussanah Ahern

Professor Ahern is a medical administrator and academic in health services research. As the Head of the Clinical Outcomes Reporting and Research Program, she is the Monash Academic Lead for four national clinical quality registries.

She is the recipient of many grants for registry-related research and improvement projects, and has published over 100 academic papers and forty technical registry reports. She is a member of national and international registry committees and collaborations, and is a member of the Commission’s CQR Working Group and the Commonwealth’s CQR Alliance.

Jade Curtis

Jade is the Data Manager for the Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database (ANZARD), which collects and monitors the perinatal outcomes of assisted reproduction cycles in Australia and New Zealand. She is also Co-Chair of the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Clinical Quality Registry Special Interest Group (ACTA CQR SIG) and is currently undertaking a Professional Doctorate in Applied Public Health.

Originally from Jamaica, Jade’s love for mathematics and biostatistics led her to a career in medical research, specifically, clinical investigations focused on melanoma, nephrology and more recently, assisted reproduction technologies. Jade has experience in project management, data management and biostatistics and has contributed to the success of several investigator-initiated studies internationally and locally.

Suchit Handa

Suchit is an experienced health service executive with a demonstrated history of improving quality and outcomes across healthcare. He has a background in Mental Health, Drug & Alcohol, and has led health organisations through wide-ranging changes, including redevelopments, implementation of new models of care, and managing the COVID-19 pandemic in both a metropolitan CALD community and in rural remote NSW.

With a Master’s Degree focused in Health Service Management, Suchit strives to deliver safe and innovative healthcare. Currently, he is the Director, Measurement for Improvement at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Suchit is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Tamara Hooper

Tamara Hooper is the Strategic Director, SAHMRI Registry Centre. Tamara is an experienced project manager who has led and managed many complex research projects, managed the Registry-Nested Clinical Trials portfolio whilst at the AOANJRR, established the ACOR TAVI Registry, and has held commercial healthcare roles nationally within the education, marketing and sales environment.

Tamara is passionate about growing the CQR sector in the same way that there is recognition for Clinical Trials/ research and education in the health service environment. Her goal is for the CQR sector is to reduce variation through standardisation, working collaboratively, reducing waste (duplicate effort) and demonstrating the value and impact of registries.

Dr Moira Kapral

Dr. Moira Kapral is the Sir John and Lady Eaton Chair and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is a staff physician at the Toronto General Hospital, where she attends on the internal medicine clinical teaching units.

She performs health services research with a focus on inequities in stroke care and outcomes, and she is co-principal investigator of the Ontario Stroke Registry. She is a senior scientist at ICES and the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. She has received the Kenton Award for Disparities Research from the American Stroke Association, the Hall of Fame Award from the Society for Equity in Neuroscience, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine.

Professor Blanca Gallego Luxan

Professor Blanca Gallego Luxan leads a research unit in Clinical analytics and machine learning at the Centre for Big Data Research in Health, UNSW.

Trained as a physicist, Blanca obtained a PhD in climate modelling from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She then relocated to Australia where she worked at the University of Sydney developing accounting frameworks for assessing the environmental impact of corporations. Blanca joined the Australian Institute of Health innovation (AIHI) in 2006.

During her time at AIHI, she established a growing and successful research program in Health Analytics, developing and evaluating state-of-the-art techniques for clinical decision support, precision medicine, patient safety, and biosurveillance. In November 2017 she joined the Centre for Big Data Research as head of the Clinical Machine Learning Research Unit.

Professor Stephen McDonald

Prof Stephen McDonald is a nephrologist and clinician-researcher. He is Director of the Adelaide Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and a staff nephrologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He chairs the SA Renal Community of Practice, and is Executive Officer of the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry, and co-chairs the National Indigenous Kidney Transplant Taskforce.

His research interests centre around the epidemiology of renal disease and the use of Registry data to examine access to and outcomes of health care. Catalysing change and improvement in dialysis and transplantation has been a particular focus. He has published over 250 papers and received multiple research awards. In 2025 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to nephrology.

Professor Matthew Reeves

Mathew Reeves is a Professor of Epidemiology at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. His research interests centre on quality of care and outcomes in stroke patients using large clinical stroke registries such as the national Get-With-The–Guidelines-Stroke program. He has taken a keen interest in studying stroke in women and the challenges of care transitions following hospital discharge. His experience in clinical trials includes being PI of the MISTT (Michigan Stroke Transitions Trial) study which tested alternative care transition interventions including a social worker-led case management program and educational support provided by a patient-centred website.

His methodological training includes a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania (USA), his public health training includes working at the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, GA, and his clinical training includes degrees in veterinary medicine from the University of Liverpool, UK and Colorado State University, USA. He mentors undergraduate and graduate-level students, teaches evidence-based medicine to medical students, cardiovascular disease epidemiology to graduate students, and research methods to clinical fellows and residents.