Dr. Helen Keen is a clinical rheumatologist and early career researcher, having been awarded her PhD (Leeds) in 2011.  She is the head of both the South and East Metropolitan Health Services Rheumatology service.  

Helen began her rheumatology training in Perth, where she was exposed to pharmaceutical-driven clinical trials, and first trained in GCP.  She was then exposed to NHMRC-funded RCT trials during a fellowship in Adelaide.  This exposure to clinical research led to her pursuing a 3-year fellowship at the University of Leeds, a world-renowned expert in rheumatology clinical trials.  In this setting, she had extensive training in clinical trials, outcome methodology, and imaging.  She was involved in many clinical trials, with particular relevance to developing outcome tools and optimising outcomes for patients with rheumatic diseases.  Helen was the first to systematically investigate the role and validity of US as an imaging outcome tool in osteoarthritis, a research field that is now growing.

On returning to Western Australia, she worked to develop a thriving centre of rheumatology clinical care and research, which currently consists of 4 Trainees, 11 Rheumatologists, 1 clinical nurse, and 4 research nurses.  She currently supervises 2 PhD students and 2 Master Students.  With Collaborators, she has been awarded over $6 Million in grant funding in the last 5 years.

Helen was an OMERACT fellow in 2008 and has been engaged continuously with OMERACT since that time.  She has been co-chair of the OMERACT ultrasound working group since 2018, contributing to imaging research, her interest remains clinical trials with an interest in RCTs of rheumatic diseases.