Journal of Biometrics & Biostatistics

Susan Wells

Biography

Susan Wells is a Public Health Physician with a background of 10 years as a general practitioner and currently works in Quality Improvement and Health Innovation within the Section of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is a member of EPIQ , an in-house group undertaking postgraduate and undergraduate teaching, research and consultancies in evidence based healthcare, health informatics and quality improvement. Her key research interests are cardiovascular epidemiology, risk communication and patient access to electronic medical records via portals/personal Health records. Since 2002, she has been the clinical project leader of a primary care web-based decision support programme of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment and management, PREDICT. The content of the programme is based on New Zealand guidelines for cardiovascular risk assessment and management and the management of type 2 diabetes. With Health Research Council funding she is the co-principal investigator of the HRC-PREDICT project that has developed a large CVD risk prediction cohort (>400,000 people) through the use of PREDICT in primary and secondary care services. In 2008, Sue and Dr Andrew Kerr (Head of Cardiology, Middlemore Hospital) designed the Your Heart Forecast tool. With funding by the Heart Foundation, this was developed by IT specialists at Enigma Publishing Limited. This tool supports CVD risk communication between doctors and nurses and their patients using a graphic story.

In 2012/13 Sue was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Policy and Practice and based at Harvard Medical School/Partners Health Care and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Her US research investigated patient engagement in health and interaction with services via patient portals. These provide patients with secure on-line access to their electronic health records and healthcare team and are new technologies for New Zealand. In 2014, she was appointed e-health Ambassador for patient portals by the Minister of Health.

Research Interest

primary care, Quality improvement, Cardiovascular epidemiology, Computerised decision support systems, Health Informatics: patient portals