Faculty of Health Sciences & Medicine

Research Centres & Groups

Health Informatics Research Centre

Australians need to better manage their own health in the interests of their own wellbeing and to ensure the national health bill remains manageable and directed to more critical care needs.

Evidence-based care plans are known to dramatically improve care outcomes. But in Australia less than 15 per cent of people with chronic disease are provided with plans and less than 1% are reviewed and monitored for adherence to these plans. The care plan is largely paper-based and voluntary.

The Health Informatics researchers at Bond University have expertise in areas critically important to the chronic care management process. Such expertise resides in two clusters:

School of Health Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine with Professor Chris Del Mar as one of the world’s leading authorities of evidence-based medicine
School of Information Technology (IT) within the Faculty of Business, Technology and Sustainable Development with Professor Iain Morrison’s extensive research in e-health and effective applications of IT to business

By bringing together these two sources of expertise through the establishment of a Health Informatics Research Centre for chronic diseases, the focus will be on improving community-based care and education programs through application of the innovative use of emerging technologies supported by evaluated trials.

The Centre will focus on research into the applications of technology devices, automated patient flow processes and decision support systems to enhance chronic healthcare.

Based on research findings, the Centre will develop education programs for healthcare professional practices as well as for patients to ensure that the research benefits have a wide positive impact on the community.

The main program directions envisaged for the Centre in the initial three-year period are to apply the research outcomes of earlier work to identify practice settings of need and to conduct necessary clinical and effectiveness trials in collaboration with key stakeholders and funding agencies. This program aims to apply outcomes and prototypes from the Health Informatics programs to directly address the gaps in chronic care management identified nationally.

Several discussions with The Gold Coast Hospital and the University have taken place for a trial of the application of the Clinical Pathways research involving evaluated use of the new wireless sensors. Recent visits to the National Health Service (NHS) Health Informatics Centres on Tayside have led to keen interest in, and an expression of interest in participation in, applications of our research.