2022 MMS Indigenous Development Grant

Congratulations to Department of Paediatrics researcher Dr Karyn Ferguson who was awarded the 2022 Melbourne Medical School Indigenous Development Grant.

The scheme, launched in 2021, provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and graduate research students in the School grants to undertake activities which support their career and professional development.

Dr Karyn Ferguson
Department of Paediatrics

Investigating prescribing patterns using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and patient records

Karyn is a proud Yorta Yorta woman and a current MDHS Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with the Melbourne Children’s Campus. Karyn completed her PhD in 2021 as one of the inaugural Dhungala Kaiela Fellows through the Melbourne Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. She also holds a Masters Degree in Health and Social Science. Her research interests are Aboriginal maternal, infant and child health and the application of population data linkage, traditional geo-spatial boundaries and sovereignty practices to strengthen Aboriginal community data governance.

This grant will support Karyn in identifying, curating and linking population data sets to help inform the development and maintenance of frameworks for training clinicians to provide culturally safe, equitable health care for Aboriginal patients. Karyn will utilise statistical and machine learning models to develop data-driven, actionable insights to investigate potential differences in prescribing habits and diagnosis assessment when caring for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal patients.