Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC)
Healthcare, as it's currently delivered in Australia, is not sustainable. Health systems are straining under rising costs, increasing demand and growing wait times.
The Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC) is a leading digital health research centre based at The University of Queensland (UQ). We are a collaborative of six UQ faculties, working closely with external partners and consumers to create a true learning health system - one that harnesses the power of digital solutions to improve care delivery.
Funded through The University of Queensland’s Vice-Chancellor’s Health Research Accelerator (HERA) initiative to tackle urgent health and medical challenges, QDHeC's director is Professor Clair Sullivan, an internationally recognised clinical informatician and specalist endocrinologist.
QDHeC Annual Symposium
Vision
Our vision is to be a catalyst for achieving the Quintuple Aim of Healthcare: improved healthcare team wellbeing, improved patient experience, reduced costs and improved value, improved population health and advanced health equity.
The Quintuple Aim of Healthcare
The Quintuple Aim of Healthcare updates the Quadruple Aim to specifically call out health equity objectives, a step supported by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. To address the fifth aim, healthcare leaders and practitioners are urged to "identify disparities, design and implement evidence-based interventions to reduce them, invest in equity measurement, and incentivize the achievement of equity". Read more about the Quintuple Aim.
Mission
Our mission is to engage and partner to create a digitally enabled learning health system. A digitally enabled learning health system uses technology to capture and analyse information about every patient encounter to improve the care for that patient in that moment, for other patients into the future, and for the broader population.
What is the problem we are trying to solve? Healthcare, as it is currently delivered, is not sustainable. Health systems are straining under rising costs, increasing demand and consumer expectations, as well as growing wait times. The data needed to make complex healthcare decisions is stored in both paper and electronic records, making it hard to access and connect with. Health research lacks the capability and capacity to translate this data into knowledge that can rapidly transform the healthcare system and improve healthcare outcomes.
Digital Transformation enables the use of routinely collected data to continuously monitor and improve healthcare outcomes to create a learning healthcare system that is cohesive, cross-enterprise, platforms and boundaries, and can help achieve the Quintuple Aim of Healthcare.
Our work aligns with the Three Horizons outlined by the 2026 Queensland Health Digital Transformation Strategy.
Researchers from all UQ faculties work and collaborate with QDHeC:
Key activities
Research
QDHeC researchers and collaborators have attracted more than $46million in research funding since the centre was established in late-2022, including:
- $15million as part of UQ’s Health Research Accelerator (HERA) program
- $3million Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant for the Digital Infrastructure For improving First Nations Maternal and Child Health (DIFFERENCE) project
- $13.7million for the MRFF and partner-funded National Infrastructure for Federated Learning in Digital Health (NINA) project
- $2.9million from MRFF for the National infrastructure for real-time clinical AI trials (NASCENT) project.
- $3million from MRFF and $2.4million in-kind partner contributions for the Life and Health after Childhood Cancer (LACE) project.
Services
QDHeC provides services on a wide range of digital and health informatics projects:
- SMART Hub - an innovative new portal made possible through a collaboration between QDHeC and eHealth Queensland and is designed to streamline data extraction from Queensland ieMR for research purposes, following Queensland Health's rigorous ethical and governance standards.
- KeyPoint - QDHeC and QCIF have developed a secure research platform that enables data custodians to manage and share sensitive research data with approved researchers
- Dashboards to improve policy and practice decisions
- Using machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Federated Learning to solve global health challenges.
Education
QDHeC, in collaboration with the UQ Business School, offers a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health and a range of professional development events link to events page, including Queensland Digital Health Grand Rounds.
Professor Clair Sullivan
Director, QDHeC
The University of Queensland
Professor Clair Sullivan is an internationally-recognised leading practising and academic clinical informatician who helps drive digital health transformation in Queensland. She is passionate about achieving the best outcomes for every patient in the Australian healthcare system.
QDHeC leadership team
Professor Guido Zuccon
Lead in Natural Language Processing and Biomedical Text Mining
School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
The University of Queensland
Professor Markus Barth
Program Lead
School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, The University of Queensland
QDHeC researchers and collaborators are developing research to tackle the problems of:
- The growing cost of healthcare: The World Economic Forum and OECD predict emerging economies will see a more than doubling of health spending over the next decade.
- People: The approaching wave of retirement of healthcare professionals is occurring at the same times as demand for health services is rising.
- Demand: Costly care needs are growing as populations continue to age and expand.
QDHeC research
We are working to solve these problems and tackle siloed information systems to create a learning health care system. We have attracted more than $46 million in research funding since the centre was established in late-2022, including:
- $15million as part of UQ’s Health Research Accelerator (HERA) program. QDHeC is one of seven programs selected for support over seven years to address the most pressing health and medical challenges. Our collaborative approach is designed to find solutions that have a signifcant impact on human health and wellbeing.
- $13.7million, made up of Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) grant and partner-funded contributions for the National Infrastructure for Federated Learning in Digital Health (NINA) project. Rather than attempting to merge different data sets to enable machine learning centrally, the project will bring machine learning to the data. NINA will prepare and harmonise the data to global standards which protect individual privacy and enable researchers to use machine learning to progress their research.
- $3million MRFF grant for the Digital Infrastructure For improving First Nations Maternal and Child Health (DIFFERENCE) project . The DIFFERENCE project is a partnership between UQ, the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health, Mater Health, Metro North Hospital and Health Service, CSIRO, Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation and QUT. The project will help link disparate records across different heath care services with to improve maternal and perinatal health outcomes for First Nations mothers and babies.
- $2.9million MRFF grant for the National infrastructure for real-time clinical AI trials (NASCENT) project.
- $3million MRFF grant and $2.4million in-kind partner contributions for the Life and Health after Childhood Cancer (LACE) project.
Graduate Certificate in Clinical informatics and Digital Health
Lead the digital transformation of the healthcare industry with a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health.
Digital health and data analytics specialists who can improve patient outcomes and clinician experiences are in increasingly high demand globally. Developed with national and state priorities in mind and in partnership with Queensland Health and the Digital Health CRC, this program will build your capability to revolutionise digital healthcare services.
With the latest clinical, business, economics, ICT, digital and data insights, you'll graduate as an agile, innovative agent of change transforming the future of digital health services in Australasia.
Apply now: Learn more or enrol
View our latest information session
Professional Development: Grand Rounds and Journal Club
The Queensland Digital Health Centre and Metro North Health's Queensland Digital Academy co-present the Queensland Digital Health Education series to bring clinicians, academics and researchers together to hear up-and-coming innovations and applications of informatics in healthcare.
Read more here about Grand Rounds and Journal Club.
- 24 March 2025
- 18 March 2025
- 15 November 2024
Pages
Digital Health events
The Queensland Digital Health Centre and Metro North Health's Queensland Digital Academy co-present the Queensland Digital Health Education series to bring clinicians, academics and researchers together to hear up-and-coming innovations and applications of informatics in healthcare.
The sessions inform and update participants on the latest developments in research and how health informatics is translating to inform and directly impact clinical care and patient outcomes.
Read more about the Queensland Digital Health Education series here.
Would you like to be advised of other upcoming Digital Health Grand Rounds and Digital Health Journal Club events?
The SMART Hub helps researchers leverage Queensland Health’s integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR) data to drive healthcare innovation.
Digital health systems generate big data and have the potential to provide researchers with unprecedented access to information that can drive medical research breakthroughs. Queensland Health’s (QH) ieMR is the largest digital health medical record system in Australia, and SMART Hub fills an unmet need: a dedicated resource to safely extract research data under existing QH policies and procedures within a secure digital environment.
The new SMART Hub portal is a collaboration between the University of Queensland’s Queensland Digital Health Centre and eHealth Queensland and is designed to enable the process by centralising data extraction from QH’s ieMR sites for research purposes. The SMART Hub team assess data applications and ensure Queensland Health's rigorous research ethics and governance processes are followed.
How do I use the SMART Hub?
SMART Hub is made up of a team of experienced clinical informaticians and data scientists. All researchers interested in accessing ieMR data complete a research request form which undergoes an assessment.
Resources
- Watch our video about SMART Hub
- The ethics and governance process - learn more.
Read more about the Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC).