Staff profile: Amanda Chau

Amanda joined KCCG in 2017, having recently moved from Canada where she worked as a nurse practitioner and a clinical research coordinator.

“I wanted to pursue education and educational research, while still having an impact on clinical practice and patient care,” Amanda said. “This role is the perfect opportunity for me to do just that.”

At KCCG, Amanda has led the development of an e-learning module for general practitioners in collaboration with medical education provider ThinkGP. The RACGP-accredited module aims to introduce GPs to genomic testing and help them engage in conversations about genomics with patients.

“Most people who have questions about genomic testing have said they would go to their GP for advice,” Amanda said. “But we identified that there was a knowledge gap, in that most GPs don’t feel equipped to deal with these questions.”

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback already from GPs who have completed the module – it’s really exciting to think of the changes in clinical practice this might bring about.”

Now, Amanda is helping to develop a bioinformatics education program within Garvan – a component of the Institute's proposed bioinformatics strategy led by Associate Professor Sarah Kummerfeld.

Bioinformatics applies computational analysis to biological problems. As biology increasingly relies on high throughput experiments that generate large quantities of data, computational skills are no longer a niche requirement – researchers across all experimental biology disciplines will need to analyse large datasets in the course of their research.

“I’ve been talking to staff and students, trying to understand what their learning needs are in terms of bioinformatics. We aim to build a program that will be really useful to students and researchers at Garvan,” Amanda said.