Sasha Bernatsky

Sasha Bernatsky, MD PhD is a rheumatologist, a James McGill professor and a senior scientist in the Centre for Health Outcomes Research and Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the Research Institute of the MUHC. She is an established leader in research and knowledge translation, with almost 400 peer-reviewed articles, and numerous awards including the Arthritis Alliance of Canada’s KT Practice Award. She is experienced in using very large national and international data sets to study drug exposures in complex diseases, and their resultant effects on morbidity, mortality, and economic outcomes. Her particular expertise lies in using ‘big data’ from health service use, linked to additional clinical sources of information. She has honed these skills during her collaborative work with many national and international research networks. Of note, Dr. Bernatsky is nominated PI of the Canadian Network for Advanced Interdisciplinary Methods (CAN-AIM) team, initially funded by the Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN), a collaboration between CIHR and Health Canada. CAN-AIM team’s mandate is to provide new, accurate data on the long-term, real-world outcomes of drug therapies using sophisticated methods with ‘big data’. Her work on drug safety and effectiveness includes a large DSEN-funded national registry of patients receiving biosimilar agents and their legacy drugs. Dr. Bernatsky was also a mentor within the CIHR Drug Safety and Effectiveness Cross-Disciplinary Training Program, which provided drug safety and effectiveness training for future scientists in Canada.

Publications  Website