Professor Maria Inacio

Prof Inacio is an epidemiologist with expertise in population health surveillance systems and utilisation of existing data and informatics to enhance these systems. She is the Director of the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) at SAHMRI, a NHMRC Emerging Leadership 2 Fellow, and a Deputy Medical Editor for the Medical Journal of Australia. Prof Inacio was trained as an epidemiologist at the Dartmouth Centre for Evaluative Clinical Sciences (MS 2002) and University of California, San Diego (PhD 2013). Between 2004-2015 Prof Inacio worked at Kaiser Permanente, the US largest integrated healthcare provider, in the development of orthopaedic registries.

Since 2017 Prof Inacio has developed the ROSA research program and team. ROSA is a national platform and SA-based Clinical Quality Registry developed to support the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of ageing and aged care services provided to older Australians. ROSA’s research has resulted in significant contributions to the understanding of the individuals in the aged care sector nationally and how quality and safety of care can be efficiently monitored for this sector. Prof Inacio and the ROSA team have delivered several reports to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and already been translated into federal level recommendations regarding quality and safety monitoring for the aged care sector.

Prof Inacio has collaborations with several national and international institutions including Kaiser Permanente in the US, Swedish Hip Register, Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry, University of Melbourne SMART Registry, Australian Dementia Network, and Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. She also works closely with aged care providers (e.g. ECH Inc, Silver Chain) and peak bodies (e.g. ACCPA) in Australia. She is an editor for the Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research journal and is a current Associate Member (mentee) of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. In her career, she has been awarded several competitive grants, including grants as CIA from NHMRC and MRFF, published over 190 scientific articles, and been awarded several institutional (2019 SAHMRI Research Translation, Diane Ranck Leadership, and Mid-Career Awards) and national (2020 Information Technology in Aged Care Award, 2020 SA Young Tall Poppy Science Award, 2021 The Advertiser Sunday Mail’s Woman of the Year- Top Innovator) awards. She was a Hospital Research Foundation Mid-career Fellow between 2020 and 2023.