Robert Boots

Associate Professor Robert Boots is a member of the clinical team at the Burns, Trauma and Critical Care Research Centre. Rob currently is a senior Thoracic and Sleep Physician in the Department of Thoracic Medicine, Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and continues to practice intensive care medicine in Bundaberg. His current research interests relate to biologic circadian rhythm dysfunction particularly as it relates to recovery from critical illness in addition to applications of virtual reality distraction therapy to improve patient outcomes from complex illness. Previously Rob served as the Deputy Director of the Department of Intensive Care Medicineat RBWH for 20 years and has qualifications in both respiratory medicine and intensive care. He has a strong background in clinical epidemiology and research previslu researching the management of burns and prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia. He has served as Deputy Director of Clinical Training and Chairman of the Medical Emergency Response Training Program at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Rob received training in clinical education from the Harvard Macy Program for Physician Educators in Boston USA and the Bulstrode and Hunt program of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edin). He was a key stakeholder in the development of the business case and the despite of the Queensland Health Clinical Skills Development Centre whoch opened in 2004. After serving for 6 years as the Chairman of the Queensland Regional Committee of the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care he was electived to the Board of the College of Intensive Care Medicine in 2010, serving as the Censor, Education Officer and Research Officer during the transition of the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine to the existing CICM. He previously served as the Deputy Chair of the Patholgy Primary Exmaination Committee of the RACS and is currently a senior member of the National Examiation Panel of the RACP. Rob is involved with many projects as a main investigator and supervises postgraduate students attached to the research unit. Pulmonary Infection in Ventilated Patients: Presently investigating the use of inhaled heparin in the prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia Asthma management in the ICU: Current survey of practice in Queensland Effectiveness of Telemedicine in ICU patient Care: Extensive effectiveness review of the existing program in Bundaberg Base Hospital Effect of ICU outpatient review in the outcomes of patients with sepsis: A randomised trial of a clinical outpatient review of patients who have been discharged from the intensive care unit for sepsis to assess their physical and emotional status. This is the present project in a suite of projects related to the rehabilitation of ICU patients. Effective Recommendations based on Multi-Source Data: Collaboration with the Engineering Department of University of Queensland with Prof Xue Li. Large-scale data collected from multiple sources such as the Web, sensor networks, academic publications,and social networks provide a new opportunity to exploit useful information for effective and efficient recommendations and decision making. In this project, we propose a new framework of recommender systems that is based on analysing relationships between different types of objects from multiple data sources. A graph model will be built to represent the extracted semantic relationships and novel linkage analysis based algorithms will be developed for ranking objects using the data of an established clinical information system in the ICU.

[2025] Biopsy decision for intermediate–high-risk lung nodules is significantly changed when guided by prior positron emission tomography/CT (PET/CT) results: results of the prospective PET-FIRST study. Fielding, David, Sidhu, Calvin, Alkhater, Mahmoud, Alawami, Moayed, Kops, Stephan E. P., van der Heijden, Erik H. F. M., Bashirzadeh, Farzad, Windsor, Morgan, Nixon, Elizabeth, Son, Jung Hwa, Ananda Setty, Niranjan, Pattison, David A., Fong, William, Bhatt, Manoj, Dhiantravan, Nattakorn, Ramsay, Stuart, Boots, Robert, Putt, Michael, Pratt, Gary, Bettington, Catherine, Francis, Roslyn, Thomas, Paul, Steinke, Karin and Thomas, Rajesh (2025). Biopsy decision for intermediate–high-risk lung nodules is significantly changed when guided by prior positron emission tomography/CT (PET/CT) results: r