Dr Pam Smartt is a scientist with qualifications in the fields of Biological Sciences, Educational Psychology, Environmental sciences (BEd and PhD, University of Southampton, UK) and Medical Sciences (MMedSci Clinical Oncology, University of Birmingham UK) and recent training in Epidemiology, Health Technology Assessment and Injury Prevention.
After completing her undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in the UK in 1978, Dr Smartt was awarded a series of lectureships progressing by 1990 to senior lecturer in biological sciences. Prior to her migration to New Zealand in 1998, Dr Smartt was appointed to the post of Clinical Trials and Data Unit Manager in the Wessex Medical Oncology Unit in Southampton General University Hospital which she held for nine years.
In New Zealand Dr Smartt has been employed by the University of Otago as a clinical trials network project co-ordinator and a researcher in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine’s Injury Prevention Unit (IPRU) and as a senior researcher within the New Zealand Health Technology Assessment Unit in the Department of General Practice (NZHTA). Between 1999-2001 she was employed as a senior researcher by the University of Auckland within the New Zealand Environmental Health Research Unit (NEOH) in the Department of Community Health, University of Auckland. Dr Smartt joined the HSAC team at the University of Canterbury in 2008 as a senior researcher in health technology assessment.
Dr Smartt’s research interests centre around methods in medical sciences research, with particular emphasis on those relating to epidemiology, clinical oncology, diagnostic tests and imaging, and critical appraisal. She also has considerable interest in, and experience of, the handling and effective use of large national databases of routinely collected mortality and morbidity data for health services research.