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Sonya Cressman

Evaluation Lead Digital Emergency Medicine

University of British Columbia

Sonya Cressman

Evaluation Lead, Digital Emergency Medicine

University of British Columbia

Areas of interest

Health economics, health equity, risk prediction

Education

  • BSc, Biochemistry and Microbiology, University of Victoria
  • PhD, Biochemistry, University of British Columbia
  • MBA, Management of Technology, Simon Fraser University

Biography

Dr Cressman is the Evaluation Lead for the Digital Emergency Medicine Unit in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UBC and an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at SFU. She has led economic evaluations of predictive health technologies for over 10 years, working with multi-disciplinary teams to rapidly mobilize knowledge from big health data, trials, and patient-reported outcomes. She specializes in applied health economics including evaluation of financial risk protection and distributional cost-effectiveness (equity impact) analysis. Her work has supported multimillion-dollar policy decisions and international conversations about evaluating risk prediction tools. Her research program is embedded in learning health systems in partnership with patients, clinicians and decision makers at the BC Ministry of Health, the Rural Coordination Centre of BC and the First Nations Health Authority. She leads virtual and coordinated care evaluations at UBC Digital Emergency Medicine, the AIRWISE series of community-engaged lung health studies at SFU, and a new CIHR-funded “Virtual Bridges” study aimed at improving coordination between virtual and community care.

Research

Dr. Cressman’s research is driven by the need to understand how healthcare systems meet their objective to protect patients and future generations against the high costs of illness. She investigates the efficiency of health services using data and learning health system partnerships to track the distribution of access to health technology, outcomes from it and cost sharing arrangements between patients and the healthcare systems. She has established research relationships with communities in Northern BC and works in partnerships with HealthLink BC, the Rural Coordination Center of BC, the First Nations Health Authority, Doctors of BC and Emergency Care BC.  Her research methods center on applied distributional cost-effectiveness analysis, contributing to new knowledge in digital health policy and financial risk protection.  At UBC Digital Emergency medicine (DigEM), Dr Cressman’s work centers on improving coordination between emergency departments and primary care.

Awards (current funding awards)

Building Virtual Bridges to coordinate Emergency and Primary Care
CIHR Catalyst: 2023-2024

Adapting breath/air communications to rural, remote and Indigenous ways of living
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Connection Grant, in partnership with Michael Smith Health Research BC: 2022-2024

 

Publications and activities

View Dr. Cressman's publications here.