Congratulations to Asvini Subasinghe, awarded the Best EMCR Oral Presentation for her presentation: Gaps in preconception health data available across state-based perinatal data sources

• What does this award mean to you?

I was genuinely surprised to receive the award for Best EMCR Oral, given the calibre of presentations included in the conference schedule this year, and so I am very grateful to have received such great recognition for my work.

• What was the key takeaway from your presentation?

The take home message from my presentation is that there is a large gap, and variation, in the availability of core preconception health indicator data in perinatal databases across Australia. There is also a large discrepancy between pregnancy data collected at the hospital level vs the data that are transferred over to perinatal databases.

• What are you working towards next?

We are looking at novel uses of artificial intelligence to extract preconception health core indicator data directly from hospital databases as the vast majority of these data are collected at antenatal appointments. We are also investigating alternative data sources with the potential of linking large population health datasets to the perinatal datasets.

• What did you think of this year’s HiPPP EMR-C conference?

This was the first time I had attended the HiPPP EMR-C conference and I thought it was well organised and offered fantastic networking opportunities irrespective of whether you were participating in person or online.