RLA Data Community of Practice Health and Wellbeing

The Challenge

Launched in 2024, ARDC Research Link Australia (RLA) aims to bridge the information gap between research, industry, business, and government for impactful innovation. The release of RLA marked the beginning of an iterative process aimed at refining and expanding the capabilities of the RLA platform.

Reducing the information gap between the health research sector and industry has the potential to pave the way for collaborations that could lead to meaningful and lasting impacts on health and wellbeing of Australians.

The Response

The RLA Data Community of Practice Health and Wellbeing (RLA Data CoP) project seeks to develop a data-driven approach, enhancing understanding of research-industry collaborations in wellbeing. 

Our objective is to convert fragmented research data into an integrated network, yielding insights into health collaborations. Additionally, we will augment this process with expert insights, synthesising key knowledge on Australia’s health and wellbeing collaborative landscape.

This is a collaborative project, enabled by the contributions of the ARDC and:

• Digital Health CRC
• Orygen Ltd MRI
• HEAL Network
• Health Research Institution, University of Canberra
• Regional Insights Data Lab, Griffith University
• Infoxchange Ltd. 

Our work encompasses research institutions, healthcare practitioners, nonprofits, governmental bodies, and private sectors. 

The RLA Data CoP consists of 3 main components:

All data partners will contribute to RLA public data. We envisage the following data contributions to RLA:

Grants and funded projects

This includes metadata about research activities and grants funded by NHMRC, Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), government agencies, public health networks and not-for-profit organisations.

Researchers and domain experts metadata

This includes fields of expertise and affiliations. There are more than 100 organisations in the collaboration network of our partners, leading to more than many researchers and practitioners. The depth and possible scope of this analysis will be clarified during the workshops.

Connection between researchers and publications

This includes in particular policy documents, government reports and media articles, typically not available in the current PID ecosystem.

Connection between nationally funded grants (e.g NHMRC) and clinical trials and research subprojects

This enables tracing the industry engagement via a network of research activities.

Connection between research funding and research data

This supports ARDC Health Data Australia.

Who Will Benefit

• Health and medical researchers
• Industry and businesses
• Government

Our Partners

• Research Graph Foundation (project lead)
• Digital Health CRC 
• Health Research Institution, University of Canberra
• Regional Insights Data Lab, Griffith University
• HEAL Network
• Infoxchange
• Orygen Ltd MRI

Target Outcomes

This project will shed light on the processes and dynamics that underpin effective partnerships between leading Australian health researchers and their extensive networks, both within Australia and internationally. The outcomes of this project are expected to offer valuable insights into the mechanisms that facilitate these successful collaborations.

Overall, the target outcomes include:

• new research collaboration data provided to RLA
• publicly available data insights that speaks to the impact of research collaboration in the health sector.
• community outreach to increase awareness and use of RLA.

Key Resources

• Visit Research Link Australia.
• Learn about the main Research Link Australia (RLA) Project.