Enhancing Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) for Health Research

The Challenge

It is internationally recognised that social determinants are crucial in shaping population health outcomes. However, Australia’s data infrastructure has struggled in the past to support comprehensive, cross-domain analyses due to the siloing of health data from socioeconomic data at a national level. Despite substantial investment in national data collections, this investment has not yet translated into optimal research impact or policy benefit to specifically improve health outcomes in Australia.

The Response

This project seeks to take advantage of a new suite of health data set integrations in Australia’s most comprehensive socioeconomic data asset, the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA), held and maintained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The project aims to unlock the full potential of these data integration activities by optimising their discoverability, accessibility and usability for health researchers. This will include piloting novel data infrastructure to specifically support health research use cases.

This project sits alongside other partnerships with ABS to enhance PLIDA for research. Through our HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons, the ARDC worked with ABS to enhance the metadata associated with higher education administrative data within PLIDA. The ARDC and ABS are continuing to enhance PLIDA for social science research through the Social Science Research Infrastructure Network.

About PLIDA

The Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) is a major national data asset managed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and accessed through the ABS DataLab by authorised users.

Who Will Benefit

The project will benefit: 

• academic researchers
• researchers or analysts working in government agencies
• data custodians and data holders
• policymakers.

While the proposed project will benefit Australian health research at large, this initiative is a crucial step to improving key gaps in population and public health research infrastructure in Australia. It will enable robust, innovative research into the social determinants of health and health inequity, which is currently not possible. The resulting enhanced data assets will help inform public policy and ultimately improve health outcomes for Australians, particularly those experiencing disadvantage.

The Partners

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
• ARDC

Target Outcomes

• Better access to key data infrastructure for health researchers in Australia, particularly population and public health researchers
• Improved capability of Australian health researchers to capitalise on and test methodological capabilities emerging internationally, such as the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) common data model and synthetic data
• Data infrastructure that is fit for purpose and enables social determinants of health analyses at a national scale