Dr. Nicola (Nikki) Shaw, FBCS, CITP.
ESRI Canada Health Informatics Research Chair

Dr. Nicola (Nikki) Shaw comes to the Health Informatics Institute from the University of Alberta, where she was named the first Research Chair of Health Informatics in Western Canada. Her expertise in applied health informatics (HI) positions her well to capitalize on the innovative HI solutions existing in the region. She will be looking to facilitate significant local, national and international research and collaboration in health informatics. She will undertake fundamental and applied research that enables health system innovation, as well as improved and more efficient patient-centered care.

Dr. Shaw received her Post-Graduate Certification in Health Research Methods at the University of Central Lancashire, UK 2001; PhD Health Informatics (University of Central Lancashire in collaboration with Oxford University Postgraduate Medical Education & Training, UK) 1997; Professional Certificate from the Market Research Society (UK) 1995; BSc (Hons) Business Information Systems with Management from the University of Central Lancashire, UK in 1994; and her HND in Business Information Technology from the University of Central Lancashire, UK in 1992.

She is a Fellow of the British Computing Society (FBCS), a Chartered Information Technology Professional (CITP) and a Registrant Level 3 (Highest) of the UK Council for Health Informatics Professionals (UKCHIP).

She is an Expert Advisor to Canada Health Infoway and has just completed her term on the Advisory Board for the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She has undertaken several pan-Canadian research studies in collaboration with Canada Health Infoway, the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute related to the use of Electronic Medical/Health Records in Canada. She is an invited member of the COACH Privacy & Security Committee which prepares the Canadian Guidelines for the Protection of Health Information bi-annually. She currently holds over $11 million in research funding.

Dr. Shaw was recruited to Canada in 2003 by the University of British Columbia where she was a Research Scientist with the Centre for Healthcare Innovation & Improvement at the Child and Family Research Institute in Vancouver. In April 2006, Dr. Nicola Shaw was appointed as the first endowed Research Chair of Health Informatics in Western Canada. As part of the Integrated Centre for Care Advancement through Research (iCARE), Dr. Shaw’s appointment was created in partnership between the former Capital Health and the University of Alberta.

Dr. Shaw’s published work includes two books on technology in primary care; the 2004, Canadian edition is entitled, “Computerization and Going Paperless in Canadian Primary Care.” and has become a recommended text for many physician offices undergoing transition to electronic medical records.

With an applied social research focus Dr. Shaw’s research interests concentrate on developing an understanding around the implementation, use, and sharing of medical records.

Contact Dr. Shaw: nicola.shaw@healthinformaticsinstitute.ca

Kazi Ishtiak Ahmed, PhD
GIS Postdoctural Fellow

Role Description: The main focus of Ishtiak at HII will be in the area of modeling health outcomes and their implications for public health policy. He will analyze the social and environmental determinants of health cost, access to care, and resource allocation within the framework of Health Geoinformatics. His background in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allows him to include the spatial dimension in statistical modeling as well as apply spatial analysis to a range of other topics.

Bio: After doing a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree, Ishtiak decided to pursue his interests in the fields of GIS and remote sensing. He started his Master’s studies in the Department of Geoinformatics at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in the beautiful city of Stockholm. His Master’s research focused on the all weather effectiveness of Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar images in land cover mapping and change detection in rapidly growing cities in Canada and Sweden. After that he took up a PhD fellowship at the National Centre for Geocomputation (NGG), Ireland. His PhD research focused on knowledge discovery from acoustic databases using visual analytics and clustering algorithms. During his PhD, he was able to reduce Multi-beam data volume to up to 60% and successfully showed an improved seabed-mapping quality using a novel approach – combined Single-beam Echo Sounder(SBES) and Multi-beam Echo Sounder (MBES) datasets.

Discipline: GIS, Remote Sensing, Health Geoinformatics

Research Specialties: Spatial modeling, Data mining, Mapping, Satellite image processing

Publications:

1. Developing a statistical methodology to improve classification and mapping of seabed type from deep-water multi-beam echo sounder. Ahmed, K.I., Caughey, H. M., Harris, P., Hung, P., Demšar, U., Fotheringham, A.S., McLoone, S., Monteys, X., O’Toole, R. Technical report submitted to Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI), Ireland, 2011.
2. Comparative analysis of clustering methods of Multibeam Echo Sounder (MBES) backscatter data. Ahmed, K.I., Hung, P., Harris, P., Caughey, H. M., McLoone, S., Demšar, U., Fotheringham, A.S., Monteys, X. Proceedings of GIScience, 2010, Zurich, Switzerland.
3. Developing statistical methodology to improve classification and mapping of seabed type from deep water Multi-beam Echo Sounder (MBES) data. Caughey, H.M., Ahmed, K.I., Harris, P., Hung, P., Demšar, U., McLoone, S., Fotheringham, A.S., Monteys, X., O’Toole, R. Proceedings of GISRUK 2010, London, UK, 2010.
4. Examining statistical segmentation of multibeam backscatter images with geovisual analytics. Ahmed, K.I., Demšar, U., Monteys, X. Proceedings of the 3^rd ICA Workshop on Geospatial Analysis and Modeling. Gävle, Sweden, 2009.
5. ENVISAT ASAR for landcover mapping and change detection. Ban, Y., Ahmed, K.I. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Retrieval of Bio- and Geophysical Parameters from SAR Data for Land Applications, Bari, Italy, 2007.

Education:

• PhD in Geocomputation from the National Centre for Geocomputation, National University of Ireland Maynooth
• M.Sc. in Geoinformatics from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

Interests: Photography, Hiking

Contact Dr. Ahmed: ishtiak.ahmed@algomau.ca

Stephanie Secondi, BSc Human Kinetics
Primary Care Research Assistant Intern

Role Description: The main focus of this internship is to assist with the implementation of primary care-focused research studies and other Health Informatics projects as they develop. Research activities include literature reviews, grant writing, maintenance of organized project documentation, data collection and analysis, and knowledge translation.

Current Project: Completing a CIHR Operating Grant entitled Cancer in rural and remote areas: Experience of Care in Northern Ontario.

Education: Stephanie earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Human Kinetics from the University of Guelph.

Contact Stephanie: stephanie.secondi@algomau.ca