This month we spend five minutes with Dr Audrey P Wang. Audrey is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Health (Education), University of Sydney. Her role includes enabling digital health educational and research transformations within the University’s Westmead Initiative, including new interdisciplinary models of care and education in our increasingly digitalised health ecosystem.
Her PhD (Australian Pain Society Scholar) completed at Neuroscience Research Australia and the Faculty of Medicine at UNSW investigated a rare painful clinical condition called complex regional pain syndrome using advanced neuroimaging and psychophysical methodologies. Her education has also included MSc in Applied Biomechanics (UK) and a Bachelor of Physiotherapy (NZ). She has extensive clinical and research experience in the field of interdisciplinary cognitive behavioural approaches to rehabilitation as a registered physiotherapist within the NZ, UK and Australian healthcare systems.
Can you please tell us about a day in your life?
It varies a bit but definitely coffee to wake up first, then watering and debugging my balcony plants. I had an 8am teleconference today to discuss funding opportunities in digital health partnerships with industry and other academics.
I am chairing an evaluation on the proactive sepsis management project, a large collaboration with many partners including Western Sydney Local Health District, NSW Pathology, eHealth NSW etc. I also mentor clinician researchers and students via the Westmead Initiative’s STEM outreach program, on research proposals, data analysis, and hospital volunteer programs. I also attend interdisciplinary meetings involving education curriculum or research ideas for workforce capacity building.
I like to keep up with the latest research via lots of reading and writing in between my lunchtime exercise at the local park in Westmead. Then the rest of my day is made up of travel from Westmead, to the DHCRC or the CPC and home.
How do you define digital health?
Digital health embodies enabling technologies that allows people to navigate, communicate, interact and make decisions about health in a more informed, connected and timely manner.
What do you think will enable digital health projects and innovations to succeed?
It is all about the people… who are passionate about ethical equity of access and value to healthcare to ensure improvement to patient related outcomes.
Also the involvement of the end-user, patients, consumers , clinicians etc. in digital health curriculum programs that relate not only to data science but provides a relevant clinical overview of how digital health empowers the individual, health systems and policy makers.
Have you come across any surprises or challenges along the way?
My best surprise was my 73 year old hospital volunteer who taught me that older adults are still passionate about technology; he had a wearable sensor for activity, and writes Instagram poetry!
Do you have any interesting resources or helpful networks people should know about?
This is a great educational resource on digital health https://www.digitalhealthcrc.com/new-massive-open-online-course-to-educate-health-and-medical-students-in-digital-health/
Others: https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/open-source/ and https://code4health.org/
Connect with Dr. Audrey P Wang
Email: audrey.wang1@sydney.edu.au
Academic profile: https://sydney.edu.au/health-sciences/about/people/profiles/audrey.wang1.php
Website: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1230-4357
Thank you to Audrey for being our June member feature!
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