Research into the use of digital technology to deliver positive outcomes for the sick and aged will be at the heart of the Flinders Digital Health Research Centre to be launched today.
Based at Tonsley, the centre will be headed up by digital healthcare experts Professor Anthony Maeder and Professor Trish Williams as co-directors.
Mr Maeder is currently chair of Digital Health Systems and joined Flinders in April this year from the Western Sydney University, where he founded the Telehealth Research and Innovation Laboratory.
Professor Trish Williams, Cisco Chair and Professor of Digital Health Systems is internationally recognised for her medical information security expertise, wrote the first clinical record system for Australia in 1986 and is an expert in e-health informatics standards.
The centre will test capabilities of new ICT technologies to enable innovative health services and realise new models of care delivery in settings beyond conventional healthcare provider settings, for instance at home or office, mobile roaming in the community, and remotely.
The creation of the centre and the two positions are supported by the Premier’s Research and Industry Fund grant provided by the state government and Cisco Systems Australia for five years.
The centre will work closely with the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences and the Faculty of Science & Engineering.
The research itself will be a collaborative effort with the academics and schools within those two faculties as well as with the Medical Device Research Institute and with industry partners.
“The first cab off the ranks in terms of projects is what we call Health Smart Living where we create an integrated environment to be able to put in medical devices and monitoring solutions and then capture the data to analyse it,” said Mr Maeder.
The five-year project will be based at the Tonsley campus with planning underway before kicks off in earnest later this year.
While a number of industry partners had expressed an interest, Mr Maeder said formal agreements were yet to be put in place.
Research projects will attempt to address a wide range of health areas, including ageing and disabilities, preventive health and wellbeing, rural and remote health, population and public health, chronic disease management and integrated care besides health services delivery, including telehealth and telecare.
Ms Williams said the overarching principle for all research would be around improving patient security and safety.
“This is about collecting all the different points-of-care data that is currently unused or under-utilised and building up knowledge and evidence to build an ecosystem around patients,” she said.
The university hopes the centre will be a cornerstone in its expansion in the Health Technology domain.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Valerina Changarathil
Quelle/Source: The Advertiser, 10.07.2016
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