MBBS PhD EMBA

Research Interests

Associate Professor Chen is a health services researcher and a statistician with a medical qualification in 1987, a PhD in epidemiology/biostatistics in 1999, and an MBA (Executive) from the Australian Graduate School of Management in 2005. Associate Professor Chen is internationally recognised for his work in evaluating complex system intervention and generating policy-oriented research in improving care quality. In particular, his research on the impact of rapid response systems (RRS) on reducing unexpected deaths in critically ill patients had led to worldwide policy changes and the way we practice medicine. Associate Professor Chen has worked and published in many areas of health, including public health, health services research, health economics, clinical trials, and clinical epidemiology. Associate Professor Chen has extensive expertise in conceptual frameworks and methodologies in evaluating complex system intervention, in the latest artificial intelligence and deep learning modelling techniques, and in complex population data linkage studies and large longitudinal studies. Associate Professor Chen has played a critical role in the success of the Medical Early Response Intervention & Therapy (MERIT) study, a 23-hospital cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) that aimed to examine the effectiveness of a medical emergency team (MET) system. As the leading researcher and chief methodologist, Associate Professor Chen worked closely with clinicians, governments, other researchers, and many research project officers in making the study one of the most rigorously conducted cRCTs.  Associate Professor Chen has been awarded four NHMRC grants as CIA for RRS-related research and has worked as the leading researcher on various projects with the Clinical Excellence Commission of NSW, Bureau of Health Information, The Agency of Clinical Innovation, NSW Health, National Blood Authority, National Health Performance Authority, AusAID, WHO, and Ministry of Health, China.

Broad Research Areas

• Epidemiology and Biostatistics
• Quantitative methods in health services research
• Machine learning, artificial intelligence, generative AI
• Patient safety
• Public health and social epidemiology
• Casual inference methodology in observational data
• Methodology in evaluating complex system intervention
• Data linkage