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Andrew McCombieResearch Officer and Data Analyst (Te Whatu Ora | Health New Zealand) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow (UOC)

BSc, BA(Hons) (Cant), PhD (Otago), GCertArts(Statistics), GDipArts(Statistics) (Massey)

Email andrew.mccombie@cdhb.health.nz

Dr Andrew McCombie works in the Department of Surgery and Critical Care on various projects in general surgery, emergency medicine, and beyond. He is a Research Officer and Data Analyst for Health New Zealand and Honorary Senior Research Fellow for the University of Otago, Christchurch.

Andrew has expertise in statistics. Having majored in statistics at Massey University, he can assist in statistical analysis including power calculations before the study and analysis once the data is collected. Andrew has performed statistical calculations for interventional and observational research. The statistical software packages he most often uses are R and Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS). He has been the sole statistician on more than 60 peer reviewed journal articles and a co-statistician on 16 articles.

Andrew manages observational and interventional research as well as audits and has 100 peer reviewed papers on Google Scholar and Scopus. Andrew has driven projects in questionnaire validation, patient education resources, psychological interventions, and smartphone app development. Andrew has co-ordinated nationwide and international multicentre (both observational and interventional) trials. Andrew has contributed to two invited book chapters.

Outside the academic environment, Andrew assists in the use of Scope and Cortex at Christchurch Hospital including the recording of operation notes, surgical outcomes and hospital stays.

Andrew can assist with study desi.gn, protocol development, funding applications, Māori consultation and ethics approval processes, data collection and extraction, statistical analysis, and the preparation of manuscripts, conference posters, and oral presentations for publication and dissemination.

In 2014 Andrew completed his PhD in the psychological aspects of inflammatory bowel disease.

Andrew has previously completed a long-term follow-up of ileal pouch surgeries performed in Canterbury spanning two decades resulting in two published papers. He and Associate Professor Tim Eglinton translated the information from this study into a patient information brochure for ulcerative colitis patients considering ileal pouch surgery:

He has previously been a board member for Crohn’s and Colitis New Zealand, been on the Executive for The New Zealand Society of Gastroenterology, and sat on the data governance group for the New Zealand Trauma Registry.

Research interests

  • Clinical research areas including inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), bowel cancer, traumatic injury, emergency medicine, vascular surgery, upper gastrointestinal surgery, hernias, and anaesthesia
  • Patient-reported outcomes, mental health, and quality of life research including quality of life assessment, psychological distress, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, coping strategies, and the development and validation of questionnaires
  • Digital health and education research including smartphone applications (IBDsmart and IBDoc), online questionnaire development, patient education, and the translation of technical medical information for patients
  • Psychological and behavioural intervention research including psychological interventions and computerised psychological interventions for people with physical illnesses
  • Clinical epidemiology and outcomes research including incidence studies, age standardisation, survival analysis, registry studies, ethnic disparities in health outcomes, and audits
  • Clinical trials and evidence synthesis including randomised controlled trials, multicentre studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses
  • Research methodology and statistics including study design, power calculations, and statistical analysis using R, SPSS and Excel
  • Quality improvement and surgical documentation research including standardised operative reporting (synoptic operation notes) and quality improvement initiatives

Related information

Publications

Finlayson, D., Logan, S., Jemberie, D., Quinn, N., Joyce, L. R., Wakeman, C., & McCombie, A. (2026). Predictors of return to work following major trauma in New Zealand. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 38, e70382. doi: 10.1111/1742-6723.70382 Journal - Research Article

Nikolic, A., Tranter-Entwistle, I., McCombie, A., Connor, S., & Eglinton, T. (2026). Synopsys-CRC: Development of ANZ colorectal cancer synoptic operation reports. ANZ Journal of Surgery. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/ans.18951 Journal - Research Other

Vraich, A., Nicholas, E., McCombie, A., Eglinton, T., & Glyn, T. (2026). Contemporary outcomes and restorative pathways following colectomy for inflammatory bowel disease: A tertiary centre cohort from Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand Medical Journal/Te ara tika o te hauora hapori, 139(1643), 15-23. doi: 10.26635/6965.7513 Journal - Research Article

Phang, R., McCombie, A., Zeps, N., Heriot, A., & Frizelle, F. (2026). From measurement to impact: Cancer registries and the illusion of improvement. Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/ajco.70160 Journal - Research Other

Waddell, O., Palmer, J., Keenan, J., McCombie, A., Glyn, T., Simcock, B., & Purcell, R. (2026). Sexual health communication in early-onset colorectal cancer: Patterns, gaps, and barriers. ANZ Journal of Surgery, 96(Suppl. 1), CR010. doi: 10.1111/ans.70592 Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

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