Statistician/Data scientist

Health Policy Analysis Pty Ltd

Statistician/Data scientist - St Leonards, Sydney
Position Title: Statistician/Data scientist
Employment Status: Permanent Full Time
Entity: Health Policy Analysis Pty Ltd
Geographical Location: St Leonards, NSW
Salary: To be negotiated, reflecting skills and experience
Number of FTE: 1

Role in growing independent health consultancy organisation

This position is within a health services consultancy firm undertaking a wide range of consultancy projects, at state/ territory (including hospitals and local hospital networks) and national levels of the health system, many with high political and/ or public interest. Many projects involve statistical analysis of available data. The firm is well respected for its capability in analysis of health related data, and is seeking to build on this reputation through expanding its analytics capability. The firm currently undertakes statistical analysis in both R and SAS environments, and has additional capabilities in data visualisation and database management software. The role is focused on solving complex analytical problems and providing insights that will help identify the most appropriate recommendations for clients. The position will be part of a team with high level statistical and data science capabilities, with expert knowledge of health datasets in Australia. The team is continuously extending its skill base.

Further information about the organisation can be found at www.healthpolicy.com.au.

Examples of recent projects involving statistical analyses undertaken by the firm include:

Evaluation of clinical standards for the management of hip fracture in older people. The project involved analysis of time to surgery and survival of patients within hospitals having implemented the standards over a longer period compared with those managed in hospitals only implemented the standards of a shorter period.

Cost and length of stay impact of hospital acquired diagnoses. A generalised linear model was employed to model the marginal impact of specific hospital acquired diagnoses on cost and length of stay. The project involved dealing with some of the challenges in undertaking this type of analysis, e.g. endogeneity bias, interactions between the underlying condition and the specific hospital acquired diagnosis, and interaction effects between hospitals acquired diagnoses.

Projections of health services activity. Health Policy Analysis has developed a range of forecasts of hospital and other health services. Projects have involved forecasting trends for entire service streams (e.g. acute admitted care, non-acute admitted care), as well as for specific conditions/ services (e.g. interventional neuroradiology for cerebral aneurysms).

Work conditions:

The position is full time, and requires the successful applicant to work in Sydney, at the St Leonards office. Attendance at meetings/ liaison with clients, and some work at client sites is also required. The position involves occasional interstate travel, most often day trips, but may also involve overnight stay.

Salary will be negotiated, and reflect the skills and experience of the successful applicant.

What this position has to offer:

Ability to be creative and innovative in the application of statistical/ analytical skills.

Being challenged by complex analytical problems.

Make a significant contribution to health sector policy within Australia and within individual states/ territories.

Apply skills to a wide range of projects/ topic areas in the health care system, and consequently learn about these. These can be dimensions of health (e.g. mortality, morbidity, determinants of health and health service use); population groups (e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, culturally and linguistically diverse populations, rural and remote populations), and diseases/ conditions (e.g. mental health, trauma, orthopaedics, cancer, and obesity).

Become expert in data routinely collected/ used within the health care sector, including population health surveys, clinical registries, hospital/ health service utilisation data, quality and safety data sets, and population estimates and projections.

Opportunities to present work at industry/ professional conferences and publish. Selection criteria:

A tertiary degree within statistics, mathematics, data science or a related field, preferably at the post graduate level.

A minimum of 2 years working experience in a statistical analysis role.

Experience in undertaking statistical analysis in R (SAS is also desirable).

Knowledge of and preferably experience with statistical modelling approaches including GLM, survival analysis, hierarchical/multi-level modelling, time series analysis, Experience in implementing Bayesian approaches is desirable.

Knowledge of and preferably experience with machine learning algorithms.

Knowledge of and preferably experience with data visualisation applications such as Tableau, Qlik Sense.

Written and interpersonal communication skills to enable effective interactions with other team members, clients and stakeholders.

Understanding of project management, ability to balance workload and priorities and work to deadlines.

Ability to work as part of a team and on own initiative.

Willingness to continually learn and apply new approaches.

Closing date and contact:

Contact Person: Deniza Mazevska
Contact Number: 02 8065 6491
Closing Date: 15/03/2016