We need to be better at improving healthcare, and harnessing the power of AI can help
Artificial intelligence
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Australia is missing an opportunity in how to improve data-driven healthcare with AI.
Every time a patient accesses a hospital, GP clinic, or any part of the health system, data is generated. This data is stored away and accessed by only a few healthcare professionals for individual care. This is entirely appropriate and is the cornerstone of our healthcare system.
However, this data has another critical purpose: to understand health outcomes and continuously improve them.
In many countries, deidentified health data or real-world data (RWD) is safely used by researchers to unlock medical mysteries, reveal health trends, find more effective treatments and improve patients’ chance of recovery. And perhaps even prevent diseases before they even occur.
RWD is different to data collected in clinical trials and studies, it is collected every day for millions of people from all different backgrounds.
Imagine the health knowledge we could unlock with this data — the opportunities are endless.
RWD is what has helped us discover how COVID-19 impacted ambulance ramping times at Queensland hospitals.
It’s also helped us discover trends in visits to Emergency Departments across Australia.
What is the state of play on health data in Australia?
Australia is starting to get on board with improving RWD access, through a $9.5 million, 3-year initiative to establish the Australian Health Data Evidence Network (AHDEN). The University of Queensland is an important part of this work.
Led by the Adelaide University and partnered with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), this network hopes to harmonise RWD from hospital electronic medical records across the country, while keeping patient information private and secure.
Those in the network want to learn from the data that is constantly being generated every time a patient touches the hospital system.
We’re currently developing the infrastructure and how researchers will be able to ethically access and learn from this real-world information.
What does the future hold?
When I think of the future of health care, I see three exciting horizons.
The first is a world where health data is stored in one place for each person. You arrive at your GP, who has access to all of your medical history, and every scan and blood test you have ever had. You don’t need to chase up specialists or locate your records from hospital — it’s all in one place.
Number two, at a higher level, data is looked at through a lens of trends and analytics across populations. How are wait times tracking? How are the patient outcomes for a particular clinic?
The final step is where we can create new models of care based on digital data. Using information from thousands of patients and with the help of AI we can help predict when someone might experience a low blood sugar reading in hospital and stop that from happening or predict which type of chemotherapy will precisely target someone’s cancer most accurately.
We’re currently working on horizon one, but with the help of the new network, we can help move towards all horizons.
Harnessing the power of AI for health care
AI is here whether we like it or not. And when it comes to healthcare, we should be harnessing it.
Our current healthcare models are still based on a 1950s mindset, designed for people with pneumonia and broken legs and going to the doctor when there is something wrong. But these days we have people experiencing four or five chronic illnesses at once, and it’s becoming clearer that older models of care are not working.
We also don’t have enough doctors, allied health workers or nurses, so it’s inevitable that AI will be adopted in some form to help manage the load.
AI is needed, and if used correctly we can help harness it to manage the data burden associated with each patient.
Through AI and better access to healthcare data in the longer term, Australia will be able to move away from the traditional “break and fix-it” model of a healthcare to a “predict and prevent” model where we can tackle illness and disease before they occur.
The Australian Health Data Evidence Network (AHDEN) is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the People Research Data Commons (DOI:10.3565/rfrn-mj63). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
Professor Clair Sullivan is an internationally-recognised leading practising and academic clinical informatician who helps drive digital health transformation in Queensland and globally. Clair is the Director of the Queensland Digital Health Centrewithin the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at The University of Queensland.
The statements or opinions expressed in this article reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy of the AMA, the MJA or InSight+ unless so stated.
If you would like to submit an article for consideration, send a Word version to mjainsight-editor@ampco.com.au.
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Authored byClair Sullivan
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