Healthcare, as it's currently delivered in Australia, is not sustainable. Health systems are straining under rising costs, increasing demand and growing wait times.
The Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC) is a leading digital health research centre. We work closely with external partners and consumers to create a true learning health system - one that harnesses the power of digital solutions to improve care delivery.
Vision
Our vision is ambitious yet clear: to be a catalyst for achieving the Quintuple Aim of Healthcare. We are committed to improving healthcare team wellbeing, enhancing patient experience, reducing costs while improving value, advancing population health and promoting health equity.
Mission
Through our work, we are building a digitally enabled learning health system that captures and analyses information from every patient encounter. This allows us to improve care for the individual patient in real-time, enhance treatment for future patients, and ultimately transform health outcomes for entire populations.
Our work aligns with the Three Horizons outlined by the 2026 Queensland Health Digital Transformation Strategy.
The Quintuple Aim of Healthcare
The Quintuple Aim of Healthcare updates the Quadruple Aim to specifically call out health equity objectives, a step supported by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. To address the fifth aim, healthcare leaders and practitioners are urged to "identify disparities, design and implement evidence-based interventions to reduce them, invest in equity measurement, and incentivize the achievement of equity". Read more about the Quintuple Aim.
Join us on the journey to transform healthcare
If you would like to support our work, we would welcome the opportunity to share ideas and hear more about your personal interests and passion.
Your generosity will help us revolutionise healthcare delivery through digital innovation and create lasting impact for generations to come.
Research projects
Our large-scale research initiatives are applying digital solutions to target chronic and infectious diseases.
Find out more about our research projects
Our work with industry
Our QDHeC team work closely with industry partners to address the industry’s most pressing challenges.
Find out more about our work with industry
Services
Our team offers a comprehensive range of services across digital health infrastructure to support our clients to safely and ethically access and interpret data.
QDHeC is made up of an extraordinary team of researchers and external partners. Their diverse capabilities provide research, consultancy services and education across Digital Health, Clinical Informatics, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum, Business Information Systems and Data.
Centre Director
QDHeC is led by our Centre Director, Professor Clair Sullivan, an internationally recognised clinical informatician and specialist endocrinologist.
For scheduling and administrative enquiries relating to the Director, please contact: QDHeC.Director.EA@uq.edu.au
Leadership team
- Professor Jason Pole, Director Research
- Vicki Hobson-Green, Director Operations
- Professor Guido Zuccon, Lead in Natural Language Processing and Biomedical Text Mining
- Dr Dom Gorse, Director, Data Science Collaborative Research Platform
- Professor Jason Ferris, UQ Trusted Research Environment (UQ-TRE) Lead
- Professor Andrew Burton-Jones, Program Lead
- Associate Professor Sally Shrapnel, Program Lead
- Professor Markus Barth, Program Lead
Research teams
Professor Clair Sullivan
- Dr Mahnaz Samadbeik, Senior Research Fellow, QDHeC, UQ
Professor Jason Pole
- Dr Elton Henry Savio Lobo, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
- Teyl Engstrom, Research Assistant, The University of Queensland
Professor Guido Zuccon
- Jonathan Ross, Research Assistant, UQ
- Samantha Robertson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
- Sophie Macklin, Research Assistant, The University of Queensland
Dr Anish Menon
- Dr David Chua, Research Assistant, UQ
- Edan Hamilton, Data Scientist, The University of Queensland
- Ashley Stewart, Research Fellow, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Michele Masson-Trottier, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Joshua Scarsbrook, Research Officer, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Moni Dorig, Principal Project Officer, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Rudolf Schnetler, Data Engineer UQ
Operations
- Vicki Hobson-Green
- Nicole McDonald, Research Project Manager, The University of Queensland
- Christina Katterfeld, Project Manager, The University of Queensland
- Jess Tone, Project Manager, The University of Queensland
- Paola Sanoni, Project Manager, The University of Queensland
- Melanie Kam, Programme Manager, The University of Queensland
- Sarah Sheppard, Project Manager, The University of Queensland
- Amy Baker, Principal Administration Coordinator, QDHeC
- Jovenal Gama-Pinto, Project Manager
Clinical informatics
- Dr Jodie Austin
- Joshua McRae, Clinical Informatician, The University of Queensland
- Tara Isaacs, Clinical Informatician, The University of Queensland
- Yasho Wijesinghe, Data Engineer, The University of Queensland
- Rudolf Schnetler, Townsville Hospital and Health Service RDL Lead
- Nikki Roetman, Clinical Informatician, The University of Queensland
Data Science Collaborative Research Platform
- Dr Dom Gorse
- Professor Jason Ferris, UQ -TRE Lead
- Mark Hoffman, Onboarding Manager, UQ-TRE
- John Perry, Open Stack Developer, KeyPoint, UQ-TRE
- Vitaly Bnyubkin, Windows Developer, KeyPoint, UQ-TRE
Aged Care Informatics and Quality Improvement team
- Professor Len Gray - Professor in Geriatric Medicine
- Dr Ronald Dendere - Research Fellow, Health Informatics
- Dr Gillian Stockwell-Smith - Research Fellow, Care Improvement
- Dr Nancye Peel - Casual Senior Researcher, Aged Care Quality Indicators
- Ms Bonnie Pimm - Research Nurse, Ageing, Geriatrics & Quality Indicators
- Ms Michelle Lang - Research Administration Officer/Research Assistant
Our partners
We work in partnership with 5 faculties across the University of Queensland and with six key industry partners to address siloed health systems which impact care delivery. We are adopting large scale research efforts to target chronic and infectious diseases and deliver the Quintuple Aim of Healthcare.
- Queensland Health
- Stryker
- CSIRO Australian e-Health Research Centre
- Health and Wellbeing Queensland
- Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation
- Health Translation Queensland
Affiliates
We thank and acknowledge academics from 6 UQ faculties who collaborated to support the objectives of the Digital Health Research Network, and who are now affiliates of QDHeC.
Graduate Certificate in Clinical informatics and Digital Health
Developed in partnership with Queensland Health and the Digital Health CRC, with national and state digital health priorities in mind, the 2-year Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health will build your capability to embrace change and revolutionise digital healthcare services.
Equipped with the latest clinical, business, economics, ICT, digital and data insights, you'll become an agile, innovative agent of change leading the future of digital health services across Australasia.
The program is suitable for:
- clinicians who understand the importance of applying the latest clinical knowledge to better serve patients
- IT staff, IT consultants, and other informaticians who work in health services (or who wish to do so)
- clinical, technical, or business staff within health services who wish to move up the executive leadership ranks.
Students taking this program will lay the groundwork to become future leaders in digital health with the potential to impact patient outcomes across a wide range of domains.
Professional Development: Grand Rounds and Journal Club
The Queensland Digital Health Centre and Metro North Health's Queensland Digital Academy co-present the Queensland Digital Health Education series to bring clinicians, academics and researchers together to hear up-and-coming innovations and applications of informatics in healthcare.
The sessions inform and update participants on the latest developments in research and how health informatics is translating to inform and directly impact clinical care and patient outcomes.
Would you like to be advised of other upcoming Digital Health Grand Rounds and Digital Health Journal Club events?
The SMART Hub helps researchers leverage Queensland Health’s integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR) data to drive healthcare innovation.
Digital health systems generate big data and have the potential to provide researchers with unprecedented access to information that can drive medical research breakthroughs. Queensland Health’s (QH) ieMR is the largest digital health medical record system in Australia, and SMART Hub fills an unmet need: a dedicated resource to safely extract research data under existing QH policies and procedures within a secure digital environment.
The new SMART Hub portal is a collaboration between the University of Queensland’s Queensland Digital Health Centre and eHealth Queensland and is designed to enable the process by centralising data extraction from QH’s ieMR sites for research purposes. The SMART Hub team assess data applications and ensure Queensland Health's rigorous research ethics and governance processes are followed.
How do I use the SMART Hub?
SMART Hub comprises of experienced clinical informaticians and data scientists. All researchers interested in accessing ieMR data complete a research request form which undergoes an assessment.
Resources
- Watch our video about SMART Hub
- Ethics and governance process (PDF, 124.6 KB)