Robyn Clay-Williams

Professor Robyn Clay-Williams leads a research stream in human factors and resilient healthcare at the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, Australian Institute of Healthcare Innovation, at Macquarie University.

Professor Clay-Williams research is highly interdisciplinary, synthesising insights from engineering, psychology, aviation, and management to improve health services design and the safety of patient care in hospitals. 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. She recently held a NSW Health EMC research fellowship in the field of health service and system design, where she led a research program to adapt Cognitive Work Analysis as a systems modelling tool to design and implement quality improvement initiatives in hospital Emergency Departments.

Professor Clay-Williams has published extensively, with an h-index of 24, i10-index of 41 and over 2400 citations. Outputs include total of over 200 peer-reviewed academic outputs in academic books and book chapters, premiere medical journals for general medicine, high quality health services research journals and conference proceedings, and over 70 technical and advisory reports for government and other organisations. Specific areas of interest include human factors, teams and teamwork, leadership, system simulation and modelling, resilience engineering, and usability test and evaluation of medical devices and IT systems.

Professor Clay-Williams TED Talk can be viewed here: Gender equality requires gender-based design

In 2019, Professor Clay-Williams featured on SBS Insight in a program titled Female Firsts.

In 2020, Professor Clay-Williams was selected as one of 10 outstanding serving members over the RAAF 100 year history, celebrated via an Australian Mint coin (new 50 cents, released 4 Mar 2021). Watch the video here.