Health Informatics

 

Dr. Sbaffi's specific interest is in the digitisation of health services in the Global South, with a specific focus on Africa -- though her research is not limited  to this area--and on how unpaid carers access or struggle to access support services for themselves and the people they look after in resource constrained settings.

Dr. Laura Sbaffi has a BSc and MSc from Urbino, an MA from Manchester Metropolitan and a PhD from Trieste.  She joined the University of Sheffield's Information School in June 2016 and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics. She started her academic career as Visiting Scholar at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge between 1996 and 2000. In the years following her PhD she held research positions at the University of Urbino (Italy), the University of East Anglia (UK) and the Australian National University (Australia).

She then worked as research Scientist at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (Geoscience Australia) for several years. In 2012 she completed an MA in Library and Information Management at Manchester Metropolitan University and, immediately after,  joined the Department of Information and Communications there, where she worked in the Information and Interactions Research Group.

In June 2015 Dr. Sbaffi joined Ashfield Insight and Performance in Macclesfield as Healthcare and Scientific Researcher, where she specialised in current pharmaceutical market research strategies.

In 2021 she was promoted to Senior Lecturer. Her university responsibilities include

• Head of the Health Informatics Research Group
• Unfair Means Officer
• Member of the Senate Discipline Panel