Professor Louisa Jorm

I apply advanced analytics to health and medical big data, including routinely collected hospital, Medicare and pharmaceutical records, to generate real-world evidence to improve health care and patient outcomes.

I am the Foundation Director of the Centre for Big Data Research in Health at UNSW Sydney. I am a high-profile advocate for more and better use of routinely collected health data for research. I have published >200 scientific papers and been awarded >$40 million in research grants.

I joined UNSW in late 2014. From 2007 until November 2014, I was Foundation Professor of Population Health and Director of the Centre for Health Research at the University of Western Sydney, and Principal Scientist and then part-time Senior Advisor at the Sax Institute. Prior to this, I spent more than 15 years in senior government and service roles.

I have demonstrated a career commitment to putting evidence to work in policy and practice and my work has had numerous translational impacts, e.g.: driving changes to reporting of national health performance indicators; supporting the planning of community-based early childhood and aged care services; informing national guidelines for management of acute coronary syndrome in Indigenous people; and shaping national policy regarding access to publicly funded health data for research. 

I have played a leading role in the establishment of major infrastructure and capacity for health big data research in Australia, including the NSW/ACT Centre for Health Record Linkage, the 45 and Up Study and the NSW Biostatistical Officer Training Program. I oversaw the development of the Secure Unified Research Environment (SURE) and E-Research Institutional Cloud Architecture (ERICA) secure remote access data analysis laboratories. I led the development of the UNSW Master of Science in Health Data Science, the first such program in the southern hemisphere.

I am a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and Director of the Australian Chapter of the Medical Devices Epidemiology Network (MDEpiNet). I am a member of the ARC Medical Research Advisory group and was previously a member (appointed by the Minister for Health) of the NHMRC Australian Health Ethics Committee, NHMRC Research Committee and NHMRC Prevention and Community Health Committee. I was a Member of the Health Expert Working Group, Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure (2011 and 2008) and was an invited participant in the inaugural meeting of the Australia-US Science and Technology Joint Commission Steering Committee in Washington DC in February 2011.