I am a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Bond University and a part-time General Practitioner. Previously I was the Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford from 2003-2010. My key interests include identifying and removing the barriers to using high quality research in everyday clinical practice. I am the recipient of an NHRMC Australia Fellowship which I commenced at Bond University in July, 2010.

I am the Director of a team that is building capacity in health services research and does applied research that can be used to improve the efficiency and organisation of health services. My applied research brings economics to the study of healthcare service models, health-care acquired infection, and screening for chronic and infectious diseases, and interventions that change health related behaviour for chronic conditions.

My methodological research includes modelling skewed data, especially length of stay in hospital and factors associated with prolongation; how decision makers value health care costs; and the impact of different perspectives on decision making. I am developing a programme of research that uses Bayesian methods for the synthesis of evidence used to inform parameters in decision models. I am also interested in the role of randomness and funding decisions for scientific research.

My main interests are:

• Identifying and removing the barriers to using high quality research in everyday clinical practice
• Improving use of non-drug interventions
• Clinical monitoring

The research conducted by staff at the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice is focussed around a number of key, yet inter-related, areas. These include:

• Improving research processes and reporting - poor quality research reporting hampers clinicians' use of research evidence. Research in this area is examining the descriptions of non-drug interventions in trials, difficulties in synthesising and using complex interventions, and ways to improve the quality of systematic review abstracts.
• Shared decision making and communicating evidence to patients - for people to be able to make informed decisions about tests and treatments they need to receive information that they can understand and be involved in the decision-making process. Research in this area is examining ways to facilitate this, across various diagnostic areas; how to help clinicians develop these skills; and potential uses of citizen juries for public health decisions.

Thesis Titles I am currently supervising:

• Improving the Usability of Reports of Systematic Reviews
• Methodology for a continuously updated evidence-based health encyclopaedia to support informed consumer choice
• Examining the Exercise Prescription in Cardiac Rehabilitation
• Developing methods to streamline and improve systematic reviews and HTA reports
• The Impact of Treatment and Time on Cardiovascular Risk Scores