The Challenge
In the 2021–22 financial year, Australia spent $241.3 billion on health goods and services. With healthcare spending growing at an average annual rate of 3.4% over the past decade, it now accounts for 10.5% of Australia’s GDP. This investment generates millions of patient records annually, essential for care and valuable for research, driving better treatments, efficiency and cost savings for the government.
To harness this potential, there is a growing push for systematic, secure and ethical access to medical records for research. However, challenges remain in governance, ethics and the inconsistent formats across healthcare settings. This highlights the need for standardisation, leading to the development of common data models like the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP), which improves the use of healthcare data for research.
The Response
Building on our previous work to transform hospital electronic medical records (EMRs) into an international gold standard OMOP Common Data Model (CDM), we’re creating a framework and driving national initiatives that integrate and standardise health data. We’re working with researchers, health services, infrastructure providers and policymakers to promote and support standardisation of data structures, common medical concept definitions, and common identifiers for concepts, people, resources, etc. across different data sources. Such a common data model across Australia’s health system enables system-wide research questions to improve healthcare.
Collaboration
Data standardisation and integration programs will involve health researchers, universities, medical research institutes, state health departments, hospitals and local area health services. The first phase scoping and framework activity leverages the existing ARDC project in this area, namely Electronic Medical Records as a National Data Asset, as well as Health Studies Australian National Data Asset (HeSANDA) nodes.
Target Outcomes
A consultation draft of our Medical Research Data Integration Framework is now available, and high-level feedback on key themes are most welcome. Read and provide feedback on the draft framework.
By adopting OMOP and other standards, Australia can fully leverage its health data, paving the way for AI-driven healthcare innovations. Standardising data allows better comparisons across systems, transforming it into a national resource for research. It also facilitates international collaboration with such regions as the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
By leading the way in interoperability and data harmonisation, the ARDC will help unlock transformative healthcare advancements.