Dr Lyn Hanmer

Lyn Hanmer is a Specialist Scientist in the Burden of Disease Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC). She co-heads the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for the Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC SA) which is based in the SAMRC Burden of Disease Research Unit, and has a strong commitment to promoting the effective implementation of clinical coding systems in low-resource settings, especially in the African region. She is a member of several of the committees of the international network of WHO-FIC collaborating centres, including those responsible for the review of proposals for the maintenance of ICD-11.

She is leading a large-scale project to review the availability and quality of clinical data in routine hospital records, and represents the SAMRC on several national committees on health information.  In 2022, Lyn was a member of a Technical Working Group on clinical coding established by the National Department of Health, and led the workstream on the transition from ICD-10 to ICD-11 as a national standard for diagnosis coding.

Trained as a biomedical engineer, she holds a PhD in Information Systems, and has extensive experience in the development, management and evaluation of hospital information systems; and the development and implementation of curricula in Health Informatics. She is a founding member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), and is a Council member of the South African Health Informatics Association (SAHIA).