While e-health may be a relatively new concept to many people, it’s been at the forefront of Dr Christopher Pearce’s mind for the best part of two decades. A passionate champion of health informatics, Dr Pearce was a member of the Federal Government’s first e-health committee known as the Information Management Strategy Group. He went on to become a member of the General Practice Computing Group leading several of it programs. .

A practicing clinician, he still works in general practice, anaesthetics and emergency medicine, having worked for many years in rural practice. His interest in Health Informatics developed when working as a rural GP, we observed the difficulties in GPs integrating computers into their workflow in the 1990’s. 

A/Prof Pearce has extensively researched computers in healthcare, with a focus on the interactions and useability. He was awarded a PhD in 2007 with what was then the largest video based study of computer use in primary care consultations. He is an invited speaker both here and overseas, and the author of over 50 academic articles. He was the clinical design lead for the PCEHR.  As co-sponsor of the MAGNET database, his role as director of research with Melbourne East GP network is to work with Monash university on data quality and use of Australia’s largest repository of general practice data.  

He is a current vice president of the Australasian College of Health Informatics and had served on many federal and sate government advisory committees.