Md Shajedur Rahman Shawon
Shawon convenes multiple courses including HDAT9200 Statistical Foundations for Health Data Science.
s.shawon@unsw.edu.au
What publication are you most proud of?
A series of studies on care fragmentation following cardiac hospitalisations in Australia. These papers examined what happens when patients are readmitted to a different hospital after a heart procedure, and why it matters for outcomes. It was the first project I tackled after moving from the UK to Australia, which meant simultaneously learning a new health system, new linked data infrastructure, and Australian cardiology all at once. One paper1 from the series, published in Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific, was initially rejected by the editors. We disagreed with the decision, wrote a detailed rebuttal, and it eventually got published. That one felt properly earned.
What’s the most important take home message from your course?
Life is a prospective follow up study. You have baseline characteristics you did not choose. Exposures will occur. Some will change your trajectory permanently. The question is not whether you will encounter uncertainty, failure, or a dataset that refuses to cooperate. You will. The question is what the outcome looks like at end of follow up, and how your decisions along the way modified the risk. There are no dropouts in this study. Show up for every time point.
If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to yourself as a student?
Ask for help sooner. The smartest people in the room are not the ones with all the answers. They are the ones who figured out early who to call.
Who would play you in the biopic of your life?
I am still working on the third act. Casting is pending.
Footnotes
Shawon MS, Lujic S, Joshi Y, Jorm L. Readmission destination following cardiac surgery and its association with mortality outcomes: a population-based retrospective study. The Lancet Regional Health–Western Pacific. 2024 doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2024.101189↩︎