Biography

Naomi Rafael
Senior Database Adminsitrator, Melbourne Health

Naomi Rafael is the Senior Database Administrator and the Technical Lead of the Bio21:MMIM Project. Her IT background is in database administration, software development and training.

Naomi has a Bachelor of Science degree, Graduate Diploma in Computing and is studying Masters of Engineering in Distributed Computing at the University of Melbourne. She began her IT career in software development, working for a number of government and commercial organisations. She also tutored in programming at Monash University. In 1999 she commenced her role as database administrator using Oracle RDB.

She joined MMIM in October, 2004 during the implementation of the Pilot. Naomi’s role at MMIM utilises her diverse skills. As the project involves data integration, she has had to learn many technologies. She is the lead trainer for MMIM technical staff and lead integrator for new information repositories. She liaises with vendors and researches new technologies when required. She is the primary MMIM resource for enforcing subject privacy through technology. She also leads the team in the implementation and administration of the statistical tools applied to MMIM data to support evidence based medicine.

Before her IT career, Naomi qualified and worked as a professional registered nurse in New York, Israel and Victoria. Eventually, she was drawn to further education in Information Technology and hence a career change.

The MMIM project has been the vehicle by which Naomi could join her two areas of expertise, health care and information technology. She is particularly passionate about this role because in it she can preside over the synergistic harnessing of human ideas and technology to provide improved quality of life for the community.