Dr Vitali Sintchenko

Senior Research Fellow - Decision Support

MBBS (Chernivtsi State Medical Institute, 1983) PhD (UNSW, 2005)

Profile

Dr Sintchenko started his career in health informatics in 1999 after completing ofhis specialist pathologist training with the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia. In his PhD Vitali examined the impact of decision complexity on the efficacy of decision support systems (DSS), and demonstrated that DSS improve clinical outcomes when used for antibiotic management. In recognition of these Dr Sintchenko was awarded a NICS Fellowship and have extended his expertise into public health informatics. Dr Sintchenko is currently a CI on four ARC and NHMRC grants.

Research Interests

• Clinical decision-making and decision support
• Biosurveillance
• Infectious disease bioinformatics

Dr Sintchenko explores markers for early detection of existing and potentially emerging infectious diseases. His research builds on his insights into the information-processing structure of risk assessment aids and molecular microbiology and is an important step towards solving the long-standing problem of low specificity with early warning systems.

Professional Affiliations

• Australian College of Health Informatics, Fellow
• Health Informatics Society of Australia, Member
• Australian Society for Microbiology, Member
• American Medical Informatics Association, Member
• American Society for Microbiology, Member
• Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases

Past Projects

Dr Sintchenko has a research expertise in the clinical task analysis and decision support and holds qualifications in clinical pathology and health informatics. Dr Sintchenko has over 50 publications. He was awarded the National Institute of Clinical Studies Fellowship for 2004-2006 to pursue his study in evidence synthesis and electronic decision support. He was the project leader for the University of New South Wales team providing the Report to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing on “Electronic decision support activities in different healthcare settings in Australia’s Health Sector”. Dr Sintchenko sits on several Informatics Working Parties for the College of Pathologists of Australasia and the New South Wales Department of Health and consults the National and NSW eNotification and InfoStructure Projects (Pathology Event Summary). In 2005 Vitali was a Visiting Fellow to Oxford Medical Informatics, the Radcliffe Hospitals and the University of Oxford, UK.

Publications

Journal Articles

• Sintchenko V. Gallego B. Laboratory-guided detection of disease outbreaks: three generations of surveillance systems. Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine 2008 (accepted 17 Sept 2008).
• Sintchenko V, Gallego B, Chung G, Coiera E. Towards bioinformatics assisted infectious disease control. BMC Bioinformatics 2008 (Accepted 11 August 2008).
• Sintchenko V, Coiera E, Gilbert GL. Decision support systems for antibiotic prescribing. Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases (Accepted 21 July 2008).
• Gallego B, Sintchenko V, Wang Q, Hiley L, Gilbert GL, Coiera E. Biosurveillance of emerging biothreats using scalable genotype clustering. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Accepted July 7 2008.
• Cai Y, Kong F, Wang Q, Tong Z, Sintchenko V, Zeng X, Gilbert GL. Comparison of single and multilocus sequence typing and toxin gene profiling for characterisation of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Journal of Clinical Microbiology 2007;45(10):3302-8.
• Sintchenko V, Iredell JR, Gilbert GL. Genomic profiling of pathogens for disease management and surveillance. Nature Microbiology Reviews 2007;5:464-70.
• Sintchenko V. Magrabi F, Tipper S. Are we measuring the right thing? Variables that affect the impact of computerized decision support on patient outcomes: A systematic review. Medical Informatics and The Internet in Medicine 2007;32(3):225-40.
• Dwyer DE, Sintchenko V. Point of care testing for community-acquired pneumonia: do we have all the answers? Medical Journal of Australia 2007; 187:40-42.
• Coiera E, Magrabi F, Sintchenko V, Zrimec T, McDonnell G, Chung G, Tsafnat G. The Centre for Health Informatics at the University of New South Wales – a clinical informatics research centre. Methods of Information in Medicine 2007 46 Suppl.1: IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics; 159-166.
• Merritt TD, Sintchenko V, Jelfs P, Worthing M, Robinson B, Durrheim DN, Gilbert GL. Outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis in young Australians. Medical Journal of Australia 2007;186:240-242.
• Sintchenko V, Gilbert GL. Utility of genotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the contact investigation: A decision analysis. Tuberculosis 2007; 87:176-184.

Book Chapters

• Sintchenko V. Information processing in clinical decision-making. In: Lazakidou D (Ed). Handbook of Research on Informatics in Healthcare & Biomedicine. Idea Group, 2006. PP.147-153.
• Sintchenko V & E.Coiera. Developing decision support systems in clinical bioinformatics. In: Trent RJA (Ed). Clinical Bioinformatics/ Molecular Medicine Series. Humana Press, 2008. PP.331-351. Methods Mol Med. 2008;141:331-51.

Conference Presentations

• Sintchenko V. Third generation surveillance systems: genomics assisted identification and monitoring of biothreats. Biosecurity Challenges for Australia and Its Region [Conference]. National Centre for Biosecurity, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National University, Canberra, February 2008.
• Sintchenko V. Laboratory based detection and analysis of disease outbreaks. Fist World Congress on Pathology Informatics, Brisbane, Australia, Aug 2007.
• Sintchenko V. Are clinicians’ information needs and decision support affected by different models of care? Experimental study. MedInfo2007, Brisbane, Australia, Aug 2007.
• Sintchenko V. Early warning system for Salmonella surveillance based on molecular subtyping. Communicable Diseases Control Conference, Canberra, March 2007.
• Sintchenko V. Decision complexity affects the extent and type of decision support use. Annual Scientific Meeting of American Medical Informatics Association, Washington DC, Nov 2006.
• Sintchenko V. Communicable disease informatics. Annual Scientific Meeting, Health Informatics Society of Australia, Sydney, August 2006.
• Sintchenko V. Syndromic and laboratory-based electronic surveillance: A case for synergy. National Communicable Diseases Control Conference, Sydney, May 2005.