Dr. Samsiah Awang, a pharmacist, is presently the Head of the Centre for Healthcare Quality Research at the Institute for Health Systems Research (IHSR), one of the research institute under the National Institute of Health, Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia, which has been her workplace since mid-2006. She received her BPharm from University of Science Malaysia and her MMedScience (Public Health) from University of Malaya. She had obtained her PhD in the field of Pharmacy Practice from the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Prior to that, she had served as a hospital pharmacist in two states (Terengganu and Pahang), where her passion for quality blossomed. At the IHSR, she lead the Secretariat for the QA/AI Program under the MOH which primarily involves in the monitoring of national quality indicators, conducting research on quality and quality improvement in health care and leading various training programme in quality improvement at national level. She is also the Chief Editor for Q Bulletin, a local quality improvement journal. She spearheaded the Technical Working Group for the development and implementation of Malaysia's National Policy for Quality in Healthcare which was launched in 2021.
