Industry partners

A jointly funded project between Queensland Health, Health and Wellbeing Queensland and UQ, utilising synthetic data to inform decision making around healthy weight.

This project is an operational activity for Queensland Health that will build a new statewide near real-time digital population health informatics tool (“the dashboard”) for obesity. Building this tool will take the first step to digitally transforming the public health sector in Queensland and generate a precision shift in decision-making for chronic disease prevention. Throughout this project BAU processes have been developed to support the ongoing functionality of this tool into BAU.

Project partners

• Queensland Health, Health and Wellbeing QLD

Health and Wellbeing Queensland (Australia) is leading Queensland Government efforts to enhance food environments, ensuring that Queenslanders have access to healthy food and drinks options in places outside their homes. In healthcare settings, the A Better Choice (ABC): Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Healthcare Facilities sets targets for food outlets, vending machines and promotions with the aim of providing and promoting healthier options for staff and visitors.

The A Better Choice Healthcare Project Data and Analytics Solution (ABCDA) project aims to establish an enduring data and analytics solution that meets the A Better Choice Healthcare Project requirements to assess food and drink available in healthcare facilities through retail outlets and vending machines. This project aims to create a solution that includes analytical assessment criteria, viewing and increased efficiencies in reporting.

Project partners

• Health and Wellbeing Queensland

The Lipids Management in Queensland Project (LMQP) is a foundational piece for future work to improve Lipids Management in Queensland. LMQP aims to analyse existing technologies and environment of lipid management and develop a proof-of-concept Lipids Management Dashboard using synthetic data and establish a stakeholder engagement pathway for future initiatives. 

Project partners

• Novartis

Empowering the Australian Healthcare sectors to embrace digital health - a collaborative initiative

Work package 1 – Aims:

The first work package for EMBRACE focuses on establishing the EMBRACE consortium, which will be comprised of government, industry, academia, towards the strategic and effective bridging of the skill gaps in the workforce capability .

The consortium will conduct a learning needs assessment to understand the critical gaps in digital capability and develop a roadmap with recommendations and strategies to address these.  The team will then design and develop a curriculum and education and training program to address the skills gaps as well as identify funding opportunities to ensure adequate resourcing and sustainability of the Tranche 2 of the EMBRACE consortium.

Work package 2 – Aims:

The second work package will focus on Identifying and delivering a pilot program to identified stakeholders to provide feedback and assess the suitability of the curriculum and training program.

This will then involve Implementation of strategic programs to ensure the wide-spread adoption of the program.

Project partners

• Digital Health CRC, Queensland Health

The objective of the EDHE project is to support the embedding of digital health education into health degrees across a range of disciplines (e.g. nursing, medicine, pharmacy, allied health).

Under the National Digital Health Capability Action Plan (CAP), the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), in partnership with 37 universities under the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC), will develop resources and training materials to support the digital health capability for pre-registration health degrees across the Australian health and care sectors. ​

To achieve this objective the project team is:

1. Developing a list of core digital health topics (mapped to digital health capability frameworks) and associated learning design plans for inclusion in health degrees.
2. Determining where these topics would best fit within existing degrees/courses
3. Undertaking a consensus process among senior academic and industry leaders to reach agreement on the core digital health topics and associated learning design plans.
4. Identifying existing education resources/content/materials that could be utilised by educators
5. Identifying content gaps. 
6. Developing and piloting a “train the trainer” resource kit for educators.
7. Developing an implementation plan to promote embedding of digital health into health degrees and adoption of materials among higher educational institutions.

Project partners

• Sponsor: Australian Digital Health Agency
• Project Partner: DHCRC and 12 universities

The EMF Patient Flow project was a comprehensive initiative aimed at identifying and understanding systemic bottlenecks and barriers affecting emergency access and patient flow across Queensland’s public hospitals.

Through an umbrella literature review and qualitative stakeholder engagement, the project examined challenges across the entire patient journey, from pre-ED to post-discharge, and proposed multi-level solutions. Its primary objective was to inform strategies that improve emergency access performance and patient flow for both the workforce and patients.

The aim of this project is to develop an automated clinical data extraction system to streamline data collection, analysis, and utilization across Queensland's clinical toxicology units.

Objectives

• Establishing uniform data collection and management protocols across different toxicology units.
• Implementing automated systems that reduce the need for manually extracting data from the ieMR into a toxicology database
• Facilitating analysis to support informed decision-making and improve patient outcomes based on insights from prior knowledge and experiences.

Project partners

• Emergency Medicine Foundation

The Hidradenitis Suppurativa Digital Algorithm (HSDAP) Project will enable the use of validated digital algorithms using key diagnostic signs and symptoms to identify potential patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) where the diagnosis is unclear or missed presenting to hospital. This early identification solution may represent an innovative method to reduce the delay to diagnosis and assess true prevalence of HS in a population. Furthermore, by allowing earlier identification of potentially affected patients, digital algorithms may prompt earlier specialist referral. This would expedite diagnosis and access to necessary medical or surgical treatments and potentially slow disease progression.

Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC) in partnership with the Frazer Institute aim to source data from multiple systems to develop and assess digital algorithms.

Project partners

• Novartis

The ACDaRR project aims to guide improvements in the scope, quality, and consistency and utility of aged care data to enable accurate and timely monitoring of outcomes and quality, improve care outcomes and information flows, decrease the administrative burden, and streamline reporting of aged care data.

Project partners

• Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA)
• National Ageing Research Institute (NARI)

Some members of the Aged Care Informatics and Quality team are also Fellows of the interRAI international research collaboration. Our group hosts the Australian Coordinating Centre for interRAI. interRAI develops standardised approaches to measuring and recording functional and psychosocial problems for multiple care and health settings. interRAI Australia is responsible for international development of hospital systems, including the recently-released interRAI Acute Care that promises to transform nursing assessment in acute care.

The following recent reports were prepared as part of this work: ·

• Report: Deriving Australian Mandatory Quality Indicators from the interRAI Long Term Care Facility Assessment System (PDF, 232.6 KB)
• Case study: An illustration of data inefficiency in the aged and community care system in Australia (PDF, 235.9 KB)
• Aged Care Industry Information Technology Council Data Standardisation in Aged and Community Care (PDF, 833.4 KB)
• Mapping interRAI clinical findings to SNOMED-CT – Feasibility Report (PDF, 696.1 KB)