George Institute research team wins MRFF funding to help transform primary care
A team led by Professor David Peiris, Chief Scientist at The George Institute has been awarded federal government funding for a five-year program of work that will leverage a large healthcare data asset to help identify areas for health system reform at both state and national levels.
One of the major challenges for the Australian health system is that patients often require care from multiple health professionals who are funded from different sources. This requires coordination of important information to help health professionals provide the best possible patient care. Information across different health disciplines also supports the ability for patients to navigate the system and can reduce costs, both in time and dollars.
“A more coordinated health system means that there is reliable information to understand how people move through it, supporting efforts to track performance and identify areas for improvement in multidisciplinary care,” David said.
Australia ranks highly on international comparisons of health system performance and is poised to expand processes to connect streams of patient data on a large scale, such as those seen in many countries and regions such as the UK, Europe, South Korea. To this end, a platform called Lumos, developed in partnership between NSW Health and Primary Health Networks (PHNs), is starting to show promise.
Lumos follows patient journeys through the NSW health system by linking data from enrolled general practices with information held by NSW Health. It currently covers almost a third of NSW general practices.
With data now linked for over six million people, Lumos allows, for the first time assessment of multidisciplinary care delivery across the spectrum from primary care to hospital settings. It links state and federal levels of the health system to see what is working well and where there are opportunities to strengthen health system performance.
“It is vitally important that patients and community members are involved in this project. We will be developing citizen assemblies which allow patients’ and carers’ perspectives to be shared with government, academics, and non-government organisations. We will also make sure that patient and carers have a voice at the table in planning this next stage of Lumos. And we will continue to work on enhancing community awareness of how their data are used in Lumos,” Dr Anthony Brown from Health Consumers NSW said.
The project brings together Health Consumers NSW, NSW Health staff, and academics from The George Institute, UNSW Sydney, and the Australian National University. It includes three main workstreams:
- Developing predictive models to inform practical tools and resources in the areas of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and end of life care
- Investigating how the use of primary care services may influence subsequent hospital admissions and visits to emergency departments
- Identifying multidisciplinary care programs that have been shown to be effective locally and assess whether they can be implemented at a larger scale across NSW.
“Over the course of the five-year project, we anticipate there will be many opportunities to improve healthcare delivery, both in terms of efficiencies, but also by ensuring that patients are at the centre of any system changes,” David added.
“We’re excited to make a start on this ambitious but important project and it’s great to see the value of this work recognised at a national level through the awarding of this grant.”
