2007-2012 Research Program
Smart Health Services Enabled By Health Information Technology
Smart Health Services is an outcomes focussed research program that will, by 2012, target three challenges and associated strategic goals employing current capabilities and through new capabilities developed in conjunction with the Australian e-Health Research Centre’s collaborators.
Challenge 1: Improve chronic disease management
Modern health care is characterized by the care of patients with chronic disease. Cancer of the most common sites is now a "chronic disease". Obesity contributes to increased problems with most chronic disease and is associated with higher rates of cancer. Chronic disease management occurs in the community, hospital and aged care sectors. The challenge is to use information and communication technologies to improve chronic disease management.
Goals
- Improve patient treatments through increased knowledge and understanding of chronic disease by better data linkage, data mining and data analysis.
- Develop personalized health-risk analysis for patients using biological and health data sets for obesity, cancer, diabetes, neurological disease, mental disorders and brain health.
- Develop quantitative methodologies to assess the vast volumes of measurements in biological systems, initially through biomedical imaging.
Challenge 2: Reduce the disease burden from Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with increasing prevalence with an aging population. Diagnostic and treatment tools are imprecise. Prostate cancer is often diagnosed at a late stage, and treatment is associated with significant morbidity and mortality and therefore there is a significant community disease burden.
Goals
- Define the natural history of T1 and T2 prostate cancer in Australian men using multiple linked datasets.
- Improve sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tools used for detection of localised prostate cancer.
- Seek national and international collaborators to develop and demonstrate an image guided prostate "needle biopsy" instrument simulator.
Challenge 3: Support a smarter workforce and workplace
A more effective, efficient and safe workforce can be made possible through workplace and task redesign and by teamwork, all enabled by ICT.
Goals
- Enhance team-work and the networking of clinical expertise using ICT and by understanding Human Factors science issues.
- Enhance self care through the analysis of information from personal monitoring devices in sensor enabled environments.
- Develop and deploy tools to enhance communication, collaboration and knowledge, and to support community care, acute care and aged care workers.
- Develop a colonoscopy simulation system.
