Research Advisory Committee

Dr Mary Lam
RMIT University | mary.lam@rmit.edu.au

Dr Mary Lam is a member of HIMAA, a Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA) and a Fellow of Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI), with many years of experience in health information management and health data science. After years of practice in the industry, she has developed an academic career with a focus on promoting health information and health data science education and research. Her research interest areas include data linkage, visualisation of textual data (SNA), and professional training in health information, and is dedicated to mentor professionals in the field in the area of analytic research.

Yan Guo
Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority

Yan has clinical and health information management background and has over 15 years’ working experience in the development and refinement of ICD-10-AM and AR-DRG classifications. She is currently working as a technical analyst within the Acute Care Classification at the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA). Yan is passionate and committed to the improvement of the health classifications which have been used as the basis of activity based funding and benchmarking in the health sector. She holds a bachelor degree of Medicine and was a physician overseas.

Dr Joan Henderson
BAppSc (HIM) (Hons 1); PhD (Med)

Joan has worked as a senior academic at the University of Sydney since Jan 2000. She was Deputy Director of the Family Medicine Research Centre and Co-investigator of the internationally recognised national BEACH program, which ran continually from April 1998 to March 2016. She retains affiliation with the University (Faculty of Medicine & Health), supervising/mentoring Higher Degree Research students, and is currently a Chief Investigator on an NHMRC project. Joan is also the current Editor of Health Information Management Journal (HIMJ), the international peer-reviewed journal of the Health Information Management Association of Australia. She has co-authored/published 33 books, 49 articles in refereed journals, 54 conference presentations, and over 500 commissioned research reports. Her interests are in advancing the knowledge base and increasing the capacity of HIMs to participate in research about the breadth of activities undertaken by HIMs and clinical coders.

Dr Kerin Robinson
BAppSc(MRA), BHA, MHP, PhD, CHIM

Kerin has had a very lengthy academic career and wide-ranging practice experience as a health information consultant, healthcare quality management consultant and Health Information Manager. She was previously La Trobe University’s Head of the Discipline of Health Information Management, and Course Co-ordinator of the undergraduate and post-graduate health information management qualifying degrees, Graduate Certificate in Health Data Integrity & Auditing, and Short Course in Clinical Coding Auditing. Kerin is affiliated with La Trobe University as Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Psychology & Public Health, where she supervises and examines research theses and mentors in health information management research projects. She is currently Editor in Chief of Health Information Management Journal and HIM-Interchange. Her research interests in health information management and clinical coding work, and in building the profession’s research capacity, are also underpinned by her doctoral research on the historiography and work of the health information management profession in Australia.

Benjamin Brown
Monash University

Benjamin is a Health Information Manager who is currently the Registry Coordinator with the Australian & New Zealand Thyroid Cancer Registry (ANZTCR), within the Cancer Research Program in Monash University's School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He has worked on a number of different projects within the Cancer Research program, including working with the Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer Registry (UGICR) as a Data Manager and the Newborn Obstetrics Network Australasia Registry (NONA) as a Research Officer. Before deviating his career into the Health Information sphere, he was a Podiatrist practicing in regional Victoria.

Tanija Tarabay
eHealth Queensland

Tanija is a Certified Health Information Manager (CHIM), a Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA) working at eHealth Queensland. Tanija's qualifications include Masters in Business Administration, Project Management and Health Information Management. Tanija has worked as a Health Information Manager for over 20 years in both NSW Health and Queensland Health, and has a passion for health information/informatics within the digital health environment.

Stephanie Gjorgioski
La Trobe University

Stephanie is a certified Health Information Manager (CHIM) and Lecturer in the Discipline of Health Information Management at La Trobe University. She teaches across all year level subjects, including analysis, research, and health classification. She also currently coordinates the Short Course in Clinical Coding Auditing. Stephanie has a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Medical Classification), Bachelor of Health Information Management, an Honours degree majoring in Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Curriculum, Teaching and Learning. She is also currently a PhD candidate at Monash University. She has previously worked as a Health Information Manager for North Western Mental Health and has held an Honorary Research Associate position with the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI). Her research interests encompass education and training for HIM professionals, specifically around health classification and clinical coding for disease monitoring and surveillance.

Merilyn Riley

Head-Health Information Management, and Undergraduate Course Co-ordinator, Discipline of Health Information Management, School of Psychology & Public Health, La Trobe University

Jenny Davis

Editorial Board representative.

Nicole Payne
Head of Health Information, Beamtree

Nicole has over 25 years of experience working in Private and Public Health, specialising in Health Information Management, Hospital Revenue Management, Health Fund Contracts, and Patient Administration Systems (PAS) management. She previously worked at St Vincent’s Health Australia where she was EMR Business Patient Administration and Billing Lead across 16 SVHA public and private hospitals. She was formerly the National Health Information Services manager for SVHA successfully implementing a range of programs to support the delivery of high-quality care and leaders in HIS. Nicole is now the Head of Information at Beamtree and is leading the way forward in health information leadership, advisory services, data analytic tools, and Beamtree products including RISQ, PICQ, Q Coding Platform and Computer Assisted Coding to support the industry in best practice and innovation. The focus is on high quality healthcare data and providing the tools to achieve operational efficiencies, financial assurance, high value healthcare and evidence-based decisions. Nicole has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Health Information Management), a Masters in Health Administration from La Trobe University and a Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA).

Vicki Bennett

HIMAA Board of Directors representative.