La Trobe University has announced today that Professor James Boyd has been appointed as the University’s first Chair of Digital Health, starting in the role next month.
Professor Boyd, who has a strong research background and is an international expert in data linkage and data governance, will lead La Trobe’s Digital Health strategy and course development.
The position has been created to provide academic leadership in the teaching of Digital Health, as well as leading innovative and high-impact research on this important topic.
Professor Boyd said he was looking forward to starting his new role at La Trobe on 29 April.
“The Digital Health space provides an amazing opportunity to develop and apply digital technology to advance innovative research that will improve health outcomes,” Professor Boyd said.
“The aim is to provide state of the art tools to collect, manage, manipulate and analyse large and complex datasets efficiently. Extending and exploiting information to cover larger portions of the health system allows us to understand the whole system and supports better decision making by policy makers, program managers, service managers, clinicians, and patients.”
Professor Boyd’s previous research role was as Head of the Centre for Data Linkage at Curtin University. He has 25 years’ experience working with large linked population-based heath administrative datasets to produce national epidemiological and management information assisting in the monitoring and evaluation of health service performance.
