10 August 2022

Sharon Williams – Specialist Manager, the Centre for Victorian Data Linkage

Sharon Williams came across to VAHI when the Centre for Victorian Data Linkage (CVDL) became part of the VAHI division of the Department of Health in February 2021. In this profile she talks about how her team is working to support person-centred care in Victoria.

Before coming to VAHI 

I've managed the CVDL for the past five years. I’ve had quite a long career in health and human services, but I actually started off in direct service in roles in child and family services, followed by a variety of policy and project management roles.

I was always interested in the role of evidence in improving policy and service delivery, so I eventually gravitated towards managing more technical and analytic teams, because I like to improve the data and see the benefits of its application in a practical sense.

What is the Centre for Victorian Data Linkage? 

CVDL links together person level data from multiple data sets across health and human services, as well as other areas of Victorian government such as education, justice, and Victoria police.

What we do is to develop de-identified linked data assets, which allow analysts and researchers to understand pathways of groups of people, or cohorts, through the service system.

From a health perspective it enables a person-centred view, joining up all the episodes of care so you can see the pathways of the person or group through the health service system.

It's been very useful for example in understanding what happens for people who contract COVID 19, in terms of their hospital use and use of other health services as well.

Key upcoming work 

For the past 12 months we've been focused on upgrading our linkage technical infrastructure, and we're now at the final stages of the implementation. This will enable us to produce our key integrated data resource on a monthly basis rather than annually, which means the data will be much timelier than it has been before.

We are also expanding the datasets that we link with pilots of linking general practice data and MBS and PBS data, which will provide coverage of primary health not previously available.

Favourite thing about working at VAHI 

I particularly enjoy seeing the application of the linked data across various projects, as we do about 120 projects per year. I really enjoy seeing how it's used to design more effective policies and services, as well as respond to the needs of particular population groups that haven't been well understood.

I also love working with the CVDL team, they're really fantastic. It's quite a diverse team in terms of the range of skills, but it's very complementary and everyone makes a great contribution.

You can get in touch with Sharon at [email protected], or the CVDL team by emailing [email protected]