Northern Health is committed to providing outstanding healthcare by constantly striving to improve the range, quality and safety of our services. We work alongside our patients to align our research efforts to the needs of our local community, and collaborate with our partners to conduct innovative research projects and translate them into practice.

The Northern Centre for Education and Research, a joint collaboration between Northern Health, the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, provides state of the art education and research facilities as well as being a hub for our innovative research efforts.

Northern Health strongly encourages staff and the community to be involved in research, and an innovative, evidence-based approach underpins our practice.


Research Partners

University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne has strong links with Northern Health through the teaching partnership – The Northern Clinical School with medical students in the MD program. These students will form an important pipeline for our staff into the future and many will be involved in research projects enhancing those research links.

A major focus of the research we can carry out is what we call health services research – how do we improve the systems of health care delivery, new models of care, use of technology to provide more cost effective care. We also look at how we get teams of health professionals working across the primary care and hospital sector to investigate smarter ways of keeping patients out of hospital and seriously developing a disease prevention agenda. This will require significant input from all Schools in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Science and the Schools of Medicine and Population Health.

More details about The University of Melbourne Research areas are available here.
The University of Melbourne – Northern Clinical School website is located here.

La Trobe University
The La Trobe Northern Clinical School, situated within the Northern Centre for Health Education and Research (NCHER) is a key teaching and research centre for La Trobe Allied Health and Nursing and Midwifery disciplines, as part of the La Trobe Academic and Research Network and in partnership with Northern Health. La Trobe researchers in Allied Health, Nursing, Public Health and other fields work together with clinicians and researchers from Northern Health, as well as other health services and University partners, on a wide range of research to benefit Northern Health and the community.

Key areas of La Trobe research activity at the NCHER include:
• Allied Health: Improving health and wellbeing of people with disability through engagement in physical activity and exercise and improving patient outcomes via improving Allied Health practice
Nursing and Midwifery: themes of healthy families, healthy ageing and healthy systems – encompassing work on areas of aged care, chronic disease, social determinants of health and care, as well as women’s and children’s health

More detail about the La Trobe Northern researchers and Clinical School is available here.


Research Leads

To contact Research Leads please email: NH.Research@nh.org.au

CMO – Wanda Stelmach

Medicine Mayur Garg
Sub-Acute Sandra Brown
Surgery Russell Hodgson & Darren Lowen
Cancer Services (including Clinical Haematology) Belinda Lee & Prahlad Ho
Diagnostic Services Hui Yin Lim & Prahlad Ho
Nursing Annabel Milonas
Emergency Services Bill van Gaal (Cardiology), Joe Rotella (ED), Angaj Ghosh (ICU) & David Crosbie (ICU)
Women’s and Children Lisa Hui & We Qi Fan
Diagnostic Services Prahlad Ho
Pharmacy Jeff Khoshaba
Hospital Without Walls Rebecca Jessup
Allied Health Adam Semciw
Mental Health Gary Ennis