VCCC Alliance is delighted to welcome back The Hon Mary-Anne Thomas MP, Minister for Health, who officially launched the project in 2023, to the second annual showcase of this impactful body of work.
Data Connect has enabled data from general practice, cancer registries and hospitals to be linked for research purposes, for the first time in cancer research in Australia.
This has allowed researchers to examine diagnostic pathways, contributors to cancer diagnostic delay and effects on cancer outcomes, in a way that promises to have real impacts for patients.
This event will highlight key research to emerge from the project to date and exciting new uses for the linked data, including:
Data Connect is the result of an initial collaboration between the VCCC Alliance, the University of Melbourne, hospitals (VCCC Alliance member and non-member) and BioGrid Australia to link primary care and hospital data.
Officially re-branded and launched in 2023 by Victorian Health Minister, Mary-Anne Thomas MP, its team of experts produce impactful research and provide advice and support to researchers planning a cancer research project to help them access and analyse the data.
The capability of this resource is particularly suited to research examining cancer across the patient’s whole journey – from pre-diagnosis to diagnosis and treatment, to post-treatment including survivorship and palliative care.
Professor Grant McArthur is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and holds a PhD in Medical Biology. He is the inaugural Lorenzo Galli Chair of Melanoma and Skin Cancers at the University of Melbourne. In 2023, he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia in the King's Birthday Honours List.
Professor Emery's research program applies principles of implementation science and focuses on the role of primary care across the cancer continuum including prevention, early diagnosis and survivorship, aiming to improve the integration of health services.
In addition to his VCCC Alliance and University of Melbourne roles, he is also Director of the Cancer Australia Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4), and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge.
He leads a parallel program of cancer research between Melbourne and Cambridge on cancer screening, risk assessment and early diagnosis.
Dr Meena Rafiq has a specialist interest in research using linked electronic health records to improve early cancer diagnosis, with a particular focus on identifying early markers of cancer using data from GP blood tests. Alongside working as a GP in Australia and the UK, Meena has an MSc in Epidemiology and expertise in conducting 'big data' research using a number of primary care datasets worldwide.
Dr Shaoke Lei's research interests lie broadly in Data Science and its application to health service research, with a particular focus on the application of statistical methodologies to analyse linked health data. He completed a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Bristol, a MSc in Applied Statistics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Statistics from the University of Melbourne.
Dr Drosdowsky uses large linked datasets including general practice medical record data with the aim to improve the timely diagnosis of cancer. Her background is in biostatistics and her research interests include novel statistical methodologies, the translation and implementation of research, and meta-research. She has been a Health Services Researcher at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre since 2012, where she is involved in the development and execution of statistical analysis plans, and advising on study design and methodology.
A/Prof Pearce is a health economist specialising in the various costs of cancer, and her research uses methods from health services research and health economics to improve cancer care by providing relevant, reliable information for decision making.
