Education and Training

Stephen is currently a doctoral student at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in health services research, specializing in health technology assessment. Stephen completed his undergraduate degree and Master of Biotechnology degree at the University of Toronto. In his Master’s training, he was involved in research examining the effect of biomarker use in oncology and clinical trial success rates. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, Stephen spent several years in the pharmaceutical industry in R&D operations, vaccine manufacturing operations, and business development. He has training in project management, biostatistics, economic evaluation methods, systematic reviews, decision analytic modeling, and health services research using administrative data.

Publications

Search for Stephen Mac's publications in Pubmed.

Research Interests and Expertise

Stephen’s research interests are applying health technology assessment methodologies (e.g., evidence synthesis, costing analyses or burden studies using administrative data, decision-analytic modeling, and economic evaluations) to support policy-making in areas such as infectious diseases, public health, and innovative technologies.
Currently, Stephen is one of six core members who formed the COVID-19 Modelling Collaborative, and co-developed a decision-analytic model to estimate the hospital resources (e.g., ICU occupancy) required for the pandemic in Ontario. Evidence from this model, along with population-based retrospective analyses of resource use and outcomes using public health data, has been used to support provincial public health measures since April 2020 and continues to be used by the Ontario Science Table.
Stephen has led evidence synthesis and de novo model development projects in collaboration with Public Health Agency of Canada on a systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of palivizumab to support recommendations for respiratory syncytial virus, the World Health Organization on estimating the health outcomes of rapid diagnostics for influenza using decision-analytic modeling, and Public Health Ontario on a cost-effectiveness analysis of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) screening and isolation program for updating PIDAC-IPAC recommendations for VRE control.

Projects

Thesis Projects:
• Long-term Sequelae and Health-related Quality-of-life Associated with Lyme disease: A Systematic Review
• Health and economic burden of laboratory-confirmed Lyme disease in Ontario, Canada: A population-based cohort study
• Health burden associated with Lyme disease in Canada: A microsimulation model
• Cost-effectiveness analysis of potential vaccine for Lyme disease in Ontario, Canada

Other Projects:
• Economic Evaluations of Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria Mitigation Strategies: Methodological Challenges and Considerations
• COVID-19 Case Demographics, Acute Care Resource Use and Mortality by Age and Sex in Ontario, Canada: Population-based Retrospective Cohort Analysis.
• Using Administrative Data to Incorporate Age and Sex-Dependent Resource Use for COVID-19 Acute Care Resource Use Simulations in Ontario, Canada.