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 Susannah 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.

Dr Owen Bradfield

Dr Owen Bradfield is a medical and legal practitioner and currently the Chief Medical Officer of MIPS. He has 15 years’ experience in medical indemnity insurance, where he has advised and represented doctors in a range of medico-legal disputes, including civil claims, regulatory matters and employment disputes.

Owen is also a health law researcher at the University of Melbourne, where his research into the intersection between doctors’ health and legal claims has been awarded a 2020 Fulbright Scholarship, a 2022 Premier’s Award in Health and Medical Research and a 2024 University of Melbourne Dean’s Award for Excellence in the PhD Thesis.

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.

Professor Ashish Diwan

Prof Ashish Diwan (PhD, FRACS FAOrthA) is the Chair of Spinal Surgery University of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital along with Director of Spine Service at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, St. George Hospital, University of New South Wales.

Ashish is a unique combination of global excellence in the three domains: that of surgical craft care-delivery, academic thought leadership and entrepreneurial spirit. He is positioned at the rare intersection of idea-generation-to intensive research-to-commercialisation in the field of musculoskeletal health.

Dr Felicity Flack

Felicity is the national lead for the Population Health Research Network’s (PHRN) Trial Link and CROSS-Link projects, which are focused on supporting clinical trials researchers to access and use linked data. In this role, she works closely with researchers, data custodians, and collaborators to develop practical pathways and solutions that enable high-quality, data-driven clinical research.

As part of the national data linkage infrastructure, Felicity provides strategic leadership and guidance, shaping national policies and partnerships that strengthen the use of linked data in health research. She brings more than 20 years of experience across hospitals, research institutes, and universities, with deep expertise in research data infrastructure, ethics, and governance.

Felicity also supports the Chief Executive and Board of the PHRN, coordinating national strategic planning and managing relationships with external partners who share the vision of advancing health and medical research through innovative use of data. Her work bridges the gap between policy, infrastructure, and practice—ensuring researchers have the tools and support they need to improve outcomes through clinical trials.

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.

Dr Hossein Nejati

Dr. Hossein Nejati obtained his Ph.D. in AI from the National University of Singapore. He subsequently held postdoctoral research appointments at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and MIT.

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Nejati has engaged in interdisciplinary research and development, collaborating with technical teams, healthcare professionals, industry stakeholders, and government entities across Singapore, Europe, the United States, and Australia. With the focus on AI in healthcare and Technology-Driven Change, he has co-founded AI-driven healthcare enterprises while also serving as an advisor to startups and established organisations.

Professor Matthew Reeves

Matthew 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.

Dr Sing Chee Tan

Dr. Sing Chee Tan is an ICU Specialist and the Director of Clinical Digital Innovation at Northern Health.

With postgraduate qualifications in clinical epidemiology, information systems and health informatics, Dr. Tan has been instrumental in integrating digital health solutions to enhance clinical workflows. He has led significant projects, including the roll-out of an integrated medical record across critical care and inpatient areas, implementation of AI-driven tools reducing administrative workload by over 50%, and the development of secure solutions to improve clinical communication.

Dr. Tan's research focuses on applying predictive analytics to improve ICU operations, and has published on broad range of topics such as AI ethics in intensive care and the impact of socioeconomic status on ICU outcomes.

Dr Scott Winch

Dr Scott Winch is a Wiradjuri man and the Head, Aboriginal Health at the Sax Institute. His work primarily focuses on First Nations health and wellbeing research, evaluation and policy. Dr Winch has over 25 years’ experience in Aboriginal affairs from local community development and advocacy to international research and projects.

His experience spans from urban to remote communities mainly in the health and education sectors including leadership roles in community development, senior management, academia, research and evaluation and policy. Dr Winch has a PhD in Aboriginal Education, a Masters’ of Applied Epidemiology, a Graduate Diploma in Health Services Management and a Professional Certificate in Indigenous Research and Studies.