Professor Robyn Clay-Williams is an internationally regarded health services researcher and a leading exponent of Resilient Health Care. At the Australian Institute of Health and Innovation, Clay-Williams leads a research stream in the field of human factors and resilience in health care. Her expertise is in creating health services and systems that can function effectively in the presence of complexity and uncertainty. Her research bridges the gap between theory and practice, by developing products and processes that are usable and ready for implementation.

Clay-Williams has published extensively, with an h-index of 33, i10-index of 86 and over 5200 citations. Outputs include total of over 270 peer-reviewed academic outputs in academic books, book chapters, research journals and conference proceedings, and over 70 technical and advisory reports for government and other organisations. She has been invited to deliver 12 international and 9 national keynote presentations.

Clay-Williams currently leads a $2.8M MRFF Grant (APP2018361) developing new models of care to improve hospital Emergency Department performance, and patient experience and outcomes for five priority consumer cohorts. She has accrued $30.7M in grant funding as a Chief Investigator over 40 grants, including MRFF Project (3), NHMRC Synergy, EU-Horizon and NHMRC Partnership (2) Category 1 Grants, and a prestigious NSW Health Early-Mid Career Fellowship in health service and systems design, and was nominated as an Associate Investigator on competitive funding and government grants winning over $15M. She has been the recipient of 12 research awards as a health services researcher, including five international awards. Nationally, she was appointed by the Federal Minister of Health to the Therapeutic Goods Administration Advisory Committee on Medical Devices, and has served in this capacity continuously since 2014.

Clay-Williams’ research program has significantly advanced understanding about how health systems function and how to improve them. Her program’s methods have been adopted in >30 hospitals globally as new safety approaches, enabling hospital systems to adapt to unexpected events such as COVID-19, and her papers and reports have been accessed by 41,967 researchers in >30 countries from >70 disciplines. She provides expert advice to policymakers, clinicians, researchers and consumers across Australia and globally, and has made international contributions, including invited lectures, to Harvard University USA, Stavanger University Norway, Florida University, TU Vienna, TU Aarchen, Darmstadt University, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Brazil.

In 2019, Robyn delivered a TEDx talk on her human factors work that was accepted onto the global TED.com platform. Prior to her academic career, Robyn was a military test pilot and electronics engineer. In Sep 2019, she appeared on the SBS Insight panel: Female Firsts, to celebrate her aviation career. In 2020, she was selected as one of 10 outstanding serving members over the RAAF 100 year history, celebrated via an Aust Mint coin (new 50 cents, released 4 Mar 2021). 

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Clay-Williams