PRMs Collaborative Conversation Series - Dr Maria Alejandra Pinero de Plaza

Dr Maria Alejandra Pinero de Plaza

Dr Maria Ale­jan­dra Pinero de Plaza
Research Fel­low

Affil­i­a­tion: Car­ing Futures Insti­tute | Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty; Cen­tre of Research Excel­lence: Frailty and Healthy Age­ing; Adjunct Staff of The Mparn­twe Cen­tre for Evi­dence in Health, Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty: A JBI Cen­tre of Excellence.

Dr Maria Ale­jan­dra Pinero de Plaza is a Research Fel­low at the Car­ing Futures Insti­tute, Flinders Uni­ver­si­ty and the Cen­tre of Research Excel­lence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing.

Q&A with Dr Maria Alejandra

What inter­est­ed you about patient report­ed mea­sures research and/​or projects?

“I inves­ti­gate and eval­u­ate how inter­ven­tions, health­care ser­vices, and tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide peo­ple with choice, effec­tive change, inclu­sion, voice, jus­tice, health, and wellbeing.”

What is your biggest achieve­ment in rela­tion to patient report­ed mea­sures research, or the appli­ca­tion of research into practice?

“I am the con­sumer engage­ment and knowl­edge trans­la­tion per­son (Asso­ciate Inves­ti­ga­tors) for Health Trans­la­tion SA’s project: RAPIDx AI, Using Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Improve Emer­gency Care of Peo­ple with Chest Pain (sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Health and Med­ical Research Coun­cil (NHM­RC), Aus­tralia, Part­ner­ship Projects Grant — GA127019). More details can be found on the HTSA web­site.

This work involves PRMs that use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and big data, e.g., Pinero de Plaza MA, Lam­brakis K, Mor­ton E, et al. PRO­LIF­ER­ATE: A Tool to Mea­sure Impact and Usabil­i­ty of AI-Pow­ered Tech­nolo­gies. In: The Aus­tralasian Insti­tute of Dig­i­tal Health Sum­mit; 2022, Feb 21.

I have con­sumer co-researchers in most of my projects, for exam­ple: ​“Not well enough to attend appoint­ments: Tele­health ver­sus health mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion” (see the WHO web­site). This research has been incor­po­rat­ed into the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) data­base that brings the world’s sci­en­tists and glob­al health pro­fes­sion­als togeth­er to fast-track the research and devel­op­ment process and builds new norms and stan­dards to con­strain the spread of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and help care for those impacted.”

How do you approach col­lab­o­ra­tion with con­sumers, car­ers and com­mu­ni­ty? Or how do think we can work togeth­er to keep mak­ing advance­ments in this space?

“Work­ing in part­ner­ship is a robust approach to under­stand­ing end-users con­nec­tions across the dynam­ic imple­men­ta­tion process­es of ser­vices and prod­ucts. Such a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research approach opti­mis­es the prac­ti­cal, appro­pri­ate, time­ly cre­ation and move­ment of knowl­edge to those who need it to improve their work and expe­ri­ences (i.e., Knowl­edge trans­la­tion as per Kit­son et al. 2018’s def­i­n­i­tion). In dig­i­tal health, enhanc­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies in imple­ment­ing tech­nolo­gies and health research requires plan­ning, test­ing, and mea­sur­ing results with a com­plex adap­tive sys­tem approach that con­sid­ers patients and com­mu­ni­ties. It ensures repro­ducible pro­ce­dures, tracks and demon­strates the imple­men­ta­tion effects, and informs sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy or the inter­ven­tion by assess­ing its impact with­in the mul­ti­level net­works of stake­hold­ers involved.”

Con­tact Dr Maria Alejandra

View oth­er pro­files in the PRMs Col­lab­o­ra­tive Con­ver­sa­tion Series.