Second Meeting of the DS-I Africa Consortium
29 October -2 November 2022

Mrs Katherine Johnston (Participant)

Katherine Johnston is currently co-chair of the eLwazi Data Harmonisation WG and also an H3ABioNet member chairing the Data Management & Standards WP. She provides support to the DS-I Africa and H3Africa projects in the area of phenotype data collection and harmonisation, software platforms and incorporation of ontologies. With a long-standing desire to play a role in advances in genetic research, Katherine moved from a position as Head Clinical Data Manager at AHRI, Durban and joined CBIO at UCT, Cape Town as an H3ABioNet Software Developer administering their REDCap instance. She has completed an Honours degree in Computer Science and Economics and started her career working in EHR systems development. Subsequently discovering a passion for helping medical professionals in the field of patient care by building useful electronic tools she then moved into into field of clinical trials data management for the 13 years. During this time, she married and had 3 children, the first of whom has Down Syndrome. Now in the field of bioinformatics, she finds herself unexpectedly combining her interest in genetics, health informatics and patient care with her love for her children, advocating for inclusivity and research advancements in medical care, data collection standards and software development to benefit all genetically diverse people in Africa.