Partner in focus: Rob Heferen, CEO, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

What is the vision of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare?

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (the 'Institute') is an independent statutory Australian Government agency with more than 30 years of experience working with health and welfare data. Our vision is to provide stronger evidence (sourced from administrative data and a wide range of other sources) to help researchers, policy advisors and even ministers to make more informed decisions and lead to improved health and welfare outcomes for all Australians.

What are some of the challenges you face?

The Institute is focused on turning data into useful information and telling the broader story about health and welfare to improve outcomes for all Australians.

Our key challenge is being able to access meaningful and timely data. For example, the Institute gets detailed information about hospitals, especially about admitted patients. If it is accurately coded, it is comprehensive and it can then be used and analysed in a meaningful way. In contrast our information about primary care is very limited and this represents a key challenge as primary care is they key point of contact for the most Australians accessing the health system.

To try and overcome this challenge (as well as the challenge of incomplete data) the Institute is leading innovation, filling data gaps through such analysis techniques as data linkage.

As technology improves, agencies such as ours have been able to increase the sophistication of our data analyses and operations to fill many of the data gaps.

We have set up systems and are supporting our team to establish and explore integrated (linked) data and utilise AI capabilities. This has the potential to provide further insights into the complex links between social determinants of health and outcomes, and greater evidence for causal pathways to good health.

Another key challenge is ensuring we maintain and enhance the expertise in our workforce. Like many agencies working with emerging technologies we require the best and brightest minds to deliver these services, whilst also ensuring we continue with the routine data science and analysis through data modelling, establishing relational health and welfare data sets, and publishing statistical analyses.

In delivering all of this, we are also working to better meet the diverse needs of state, territory and federal government agencies, universities, research centres, and non-government organisations to develop sound policy and programs for the Australian population.

Can you explain one of your organisation's recent innovations?

In April 2022, the Institute was funded by the Medical Research Future Fund to establish a national linked data platform using existing health data sets to strengthen evidence-based public health and health system planning and management for current and future pandemics.

Linking COVID-19-related data sets will provide new insights into the health outcomes for people who have been diagnosed with the disease, and the effect that COVID has had on the health system and broader community. It will also offer researchers the opportunity to explore a range of issues associated with the pandemic.

What is it about the partnership with Healthdirect Australia that is most valuable to you?

Our purpose is to tell the broader story about the health and welfare of Australians. The Healthdirect partnership provides the opportunity to share this information with people at a time when they need it, in a way that is meaningful and timely.

As we identify trends, insights and data gaps, our partnerships allow these high-quality analyses and services, to allow us to increase the levels of understanding of health and welfare issues. This creates a solid evidence base that can drive changes in policy and service delivery directly to improve the health and welfare of all Australians.