Associate ProfessorSimon Poon

BSc PhD MPH (Sydney) MEM GCMathSci (UTS) CPL (BAe)

Dr Simon K. Poon is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney specialising in Health Informatics Research. He is a cross-disciplinary researcher with training in diverse disciplines including Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Management, Information Systems and Public Health.

His research interests encompass the interaction of health and technology. With the increasing shift towards collaborative healthcare and the increase in the use of digital technologies, one of Simon’s key research agenda is to foster methodological advances in health technology evaluation.

One aspect is about developing qualitative and quantitative methods and tools to assess impacts of health technologies in complex organisational settings.

The other aspect is to identify and evaluate factors that affect the successful adoption of health technologies. His ongoing effort in collaboration with clinical colleagues is to validate practical measurement models that could reflect on technological, organisational and process issues for digital health adoption in hospital and community settings.

He is interested in developing practical artificial intelligent tools for medical screening and monitoring. His recent research work includes using machine learning to explore the relationships between blood pressure variability and risk of stroke, new features for dementia screening and classifications of footstep patterns for fall prevention. Simon has also published extensively in the emerging area of complementary and integrative medicine.

Simon was the co-founder of a multi-disciplinary postgraduate program: Master of Health Technology Innovation (MHTI) in collaboration with the Charles Perkins Centre, and served as the director of the program from 2014-2019. He also holds honorary positions with the Sydney Business School and NSW Local Health Districts. He has supervised (and co-supervised) research students from a variety of disciplines including Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy we well as Business.

Prior to his academic life, he worked in the Aviation industry for 6 years (between 1992 and 1998) and completed commercial pilot training at the British Aerospace Flying College in Scotland.