Research strand
System dynamics, agent-based and discrete-event models built as decision-support tools for health departments and health services.
This strand covers the simulation models I have built for health policy and health service planning since 2011, using three methods. System dynamics models represent a population as stocks, such as people at risk, in treatment or recovered, connected by flows whose rates policy can change. Agent-based models represent individual people and their interactions, so that population outcomes arise from individual behaviour. Discrete-event models represent patients moving through a service, such as an emergency department short-stay unit or a chemotherapy clinic, and are used to plan capacity and scheduling.
Most of these models were built in partnership with the people who would use them. From 2016 to 2020 I was systems architect at the Sax Institute in the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre, building models with government partners on alcohol-related harm and licensed premises trading hours (Addiction, 2018), tobacco control in the ACT, childhood overweight and obesity targets in New South Wales, hyperglycaemia in pregnancy, and cardiovascular disease. From 2020 to 2025 I continued the work on mental health and suicide prevention at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. The Lancet commentary Systems modelling tools to support policy and planning (2018) sets out the case for using such models in government planning.
The earliest work in this strand used simulation in hospital settings. Papers from 2011 to 2014 combined patient journey modelling with visual multi-agent simulation to improve knowledge translation and clinical engagement in a hospital outpatient department, and a 2017 study simulated the cannulation process in chemotherapy. The same methods have been applied and taught outside Australia, including surgical patient-flow simulation at Billings Clinic in Montana (2016–2017), Dynamic Modelling for Health masterclasses at the University of Saskatchewan (2014–2017), and a simulation-modelling workshop at the University of Colombo (2017).
Systems modelling and simulation
Shows that expanding mental health service capacity past a critical threshold can shift a system abruptly from chronic unmet need to full treatment coverage, by breaking the cycle in which untreated mild cases progress to severe ones.
Systems modelling and simulation
A commentary making the case for embedding systems modelling tools in health policy and planning.
Systems modelling and simulation
Shows that systems modelling can guide suicide prevention investment even under deep uncertainty, since the best-performing combination of interventions held steady across four divergent pandemic trajectories.
Systems modelling and simulation
A system dynamics analysis showing that the effect of psychiatric bed cuts on suicide depends on a threshold that strengthening community services can shift, rather than on a fixed 'safe minimum' number of beds.
Every work in this strand, newest first.