Centre for Health Informatics (CHI)

The Bond University Research Centre for Health Informatics is focusing its research on a range of technologoies that will encourage Australians to improve their overall health management, so that the national health bill can be directed to more critical care needs.

Dr Iain Morrison, Centre Director and  Head of the School of Information Technology has joined forces with experts in the IT and healthcare area including Professor Chris Del Mar and Professor Mieke Van Driel from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine.

Mission

The Centre aims to provide an R&D focus to developing improvements in the quality of
healthcare outcomes to patients and also reducing the growing unsustainable economic
burden of chronic healthcare for state and commonwealth governments through the use of
informatics and technology.

Specific focus areas for the University Centre for Health Informatics (CHI) are:

Research

• Enhancement of Chronic Care programs
• Conduct of Clinical Trials and Assessments
• Improvement in Decision Support

Scholarship

Ensuring that research outcomes from the Centre directly link and influence

healthcare practice to improve healthcare outcomes to all stakeholders

Education

Development of education programs to (i) assist Health

Professionals/Practice Improvements and (ii) Patient Educations

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.

In the initial 3-year period, the Centre's main envisages are to apply the research outcomes of the 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 has led to keen interest in, and an expression of interest in participation in, applications of our research.