Northern Health’s research team has just become stronger, having Mark Tacey, Biostatistician returning to work for us. Mark had spent two years with Northern Health in the past, then moved to Monash University and decided to come back and work on exciting projects with Northern’s researchers.

“I’ve chosen Northern because it’s a great research community. I enjoy helping people here and seeing their research go all the way to publication. I am also involved in a couple of quality improvement projects and I enjoy seeing how that helps with good patient outcomes,” Mark says.

Mark is a biostatistician available to provide statistical analysis support for staff on their projects conducted at Northern Health.  If you are working on research, Mark strongly recommends coming to him first before you start.

“I can assist with anything from sample size calculations to presentation of data. The importance of coming to me early in the project is that researchers make sure they get the study design and sample size accurate, and that will help them achieve their research goals,” he says. 

With research projects, having the right things done at the right time is essential.

“It’s crucial that they don’t go through the whole project phase, get to the end and then realise they don’t have enough sample size or they’ve conducted the analysis in a slightly incorrect way,” Mark says.

Mark will be providing training courses relating to clinical research study design, sample size estimation, clinical data collection and an introduction to statistical analysis, which will be advertised over the coming months.

Mark is available for consultation on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday each week. He can be contacted on (03) 8468 0742 or at mark.tacey@nh.org.au, and is located in the Office of Research on Level 3 of the NCHER building.

Northern Health’s Research Week will be held from 8-12 October 2018.