Artificial Intelligence Transparency Statement

At Healthdirect Australia, we are committed to delivering virtual and digital health services that meet consumer care needs and contribute to a sustainable health system. Healthdirect relies on technology to support over 85 million interactions with the community every year. This includes the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI).

The aim of this Statement is to be transparent about how we use AI, and how we go about ensuring it is safe.

In this Statement, we describe:

• why we use AI
• how we use AI
• how we ensure quality and safety
• the different types of AI

While we do not use AI across all our services, this Transparency Statement covers our approach to considering and using AI across our operations, which includes:

• Helpline services
  • healthdirect helpline (also known as 1800MEDICARE, and NURSE-ON-CALL helpline in Victoria)
  • healthdirect GP helpline
  • Pregnancy, Birth and Baby
  • health alert lines
• Digital services
  • healthdirect website
  • healthdirect mobile app
  • Pregnancy, Birth and Baby website
• Digital products (available in some of our digital services)
  • User account
  • Symptom Checker
  • Service Finder
  • Question Builder
  • BMI calculator
• National digital infrastructure
  • National Health Services Directory (NHSD)

To improve quality and safety

Healthdirect has a strong history of using technology to provide Australians with high quality advice and information. AI presents an opportunity, along with other new technologies, to help us achieve our mission. We are committed to helping Australians actively manage and improve their health by providing trusted information and virtual services anywhere and at any time.

The AI tools we use inform the health advice we give to consumers every day by drawing on a large knowledge base of evidence that is clinically validated by qualified people. This means advice is reliable and consistent, contributing to the quality and safety of advice we provide.

To increase our productivity

AI provides opportunities for us to be more productive in how we provide virtual health services. This means we can support the growing number of Australians who need access to free, 24/7 health advice and connection to care.

As Healthdirect is government and taxpayer funded, finding efficiencies in our day-to-day work contributes to a sustainable health system. We are also aware of pressures on the Australian healthcare workforce. We seek to use technology including AI to reduce the time spent by our healthcare professionals on administrative and manual processes. This ensures they spend their time on the highest value work such as engaging with consumers.

Healthdirect uses AI for the following purposes.

Service delivery

• To support the decision making of our nurses who provide advice to consumers on the healthdirect helpline (also known as NURSE-ON-CALL helpline in Victoria).
• To make tailored recommendations as to what healthcare you should seek when using the healthdirect Symptom Checker. Recommendations are responsive to the information you have provided about yourself, and your health concern.
• To analyse and improve service delivery quality and efficiency.

Visual content generation

• We sometimes use generative AI technologies to produce visual content, such as illustrations and graphics, that may appear in our reports and on our websites.
• All AI-generated visuals are reviewed by humans to make sure they meet our standards for accuracy, appropriateness and alignment with our brand values. We remain committed to the transparent use of AI in all aspects of our creative and operational processes.

Corporate and enabling activities

• To assist with how the large volume of information published on our websites is organised and referenced.
• To write software routines that automate data management activities before testing and assurance by our technical team.

This classification of how we use AI is based on guidelines developed by the Commonwealth of Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency. More information is available here: digital.gov.au/policy/ai/resources/use-classification

Healthdirect provides a self-help health tool called the Symptom Checker. The system that powers the Symptom Checker uses AI to compute and recommend the most appropriate healthcare for you. This AI uses a probabilistic model to make recommendations. The model is based on expert clinical knowledge and a large database of empirical evidence that is constantly monitored and managed by qualified professionals both within Healthdirect and our technology partner.

You do not have to enter personally identifiable information into the Symptom Checker. This means the AI does not store, or use, your personal information as part of the model.

The healthcare recommendations the AI can compute are restricted to the rules of the probability model. These are defined by qualified clinical experts and technologists. It does not use generative AI.

Healthdirect monitors the performance of the Symptom Checker and our Clinical Governance team are actively involved in its management to ensure it meets national quality and safety standards.

Healthdirect’s Clinical Governance and Quality Framework applies to all consumer health and health related services provided, managed or commissioned by Healthdirect. The Framework aligns with national quality standards and ensures that our services are evidence-based, high quality and safe. This includes governance of the technology we use within our healthcare services, including AI.

Under Healthdirect’s Clinical Governance and Quality Framework we maintain robust, integrated safety and quality systems to actively manage and improve our services.

Under the auspices of the Clinical Governance and Quality Framework, we apply quality assurance methodologies that are specific to uses of AI before we use them. More information on how we did this for the system supporting our Symptom Checker is available here: about.healthdirect.gov.au/evaluations

In the future, Healthdirect will consider the use of AI to:

• Improve service accessibility, for example through language translation.
• Simplify and summarise health information to make it easier for consumers to understand and follow our advice.
• Continue to improve our own workplace productivity.

What is AI?

AI is the ability of a computer system to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, and making decisions. There are different types of AI.

Probabilistic AI

This type of AI follows human-coded rules based on expert knowledge and real-world experience to reach conclusions and produce outputs such as recommendations.

Machine Learning AI

This type of AI self-learns patterns from large sets of data, then compares input it receives with that trained knowledge to produce outputs such as predictions, classifications, or recommendations.

Generative AI (‘Gen’ AI)

This type of AI is an emerging field based on machine learning that can create new content, such as text, images, voice, video and code by learning from data patterns and predicting a response to requests.

You can contact our Chief Insights Officer as follows:

Email: info@healthdirect.org.au

Postal address:

Chief Insights Officer
Healthdirect Australia
PO Box K411
Haymarket NSW 1240
Australia