We offer free advisory services to help design, refine and de-risk digital health studies, support for grant applications from conception through submission, and practical tools and resources to bring your research to life.
Our multidisciplinary team and facilities – featuring translational scientists, research methods expertise, our clinical simulation lab, and digital sandbox – can support every stage of your digital health research.
We bring together expertise in clinical simulation, consumer engagement, co-design, machine learning, health data and technology, implementation science, health economics and evaluation – to successfully integrate AI, data and digital technologies into healthcare.
We welcome enquiries from academic and healthcare researchers across all institutions – please get in touch to explore how we can collaborate.
University of Melbourne and MACH-affiliated researchers can access our clinical simulation lab at no cost to test and validate digital health tools in a controlled environment before deployment.
Dr Kit Huckvale, Director of Research
I am a clinically trained informatician with over a decade of experience developing and evaluating digital health interventions, platforms, and AI-enabled systems, with a focus on quality, safety, and translation.
Working in digital health has taught me to confront the gap between what we think will work and what actually works. Many AI and digital health initiatives encounter difficulties, not because the underlying ideas lack merit, but because important risks and constraints only become visible during implementation.
Technologies that appear effective in principle often behave quite differently in practice. They may interact unpredictably with clinical workflows, introduce new safety considerations, or struggle to fit into the realities of care. For researchers, this often results in promising work that proves difficult to translate, stalls at pilot, or generates findings that are challenging to interpret.
Our team works with researchers and clinicians at key decision points – choosing the right problem, designing the right solution, progressing to pilot, and making the case for scale. We complement existing evaluation approaches with innovative methods, such as clinical simulation, that identify risks early, refine solution designs, and yield decision-grade evidence.
We're always open to an informal conversation about your work – whether you have a specific challenge in mind or are still figuring out next steps.
– Dr Clare Morgan, Deputy CEO and Director of Research, Translation and Commercialisation |  |
How we can help
Digital health projects rarely go exactly to plan — regulatory hurdles, implementation barriers, and evaluation challenges can emerge at any stage. We're here to help you get ahead of those risks.
Think of us as a specialist partner you can draw on at any stage of your project. We bring specific expertise in the areas that are hardest to navigate — regulatory requirements, evaluation design, stakeholder engagement, and more — so you can focus on what you do best, confident that the details are covered.
Our approach synthesises systems thinking, User-Centred Design, human factors, implementation science, and translational simulation into a coherent methodology for producing decision-relevant evidence on solution–system fit across the digital health lifecycle.
We're genuinely invested in seeing your research have impact, and we work best when we're embedded early. If you're not sure where we fit or whether we can help, just get in touch – we're always happy to have an informal conversation.
Support across the digital health lifecycle
Select each icon along the digital health development journey to learn how we can support your project.
We're here to help – whatever stage you're at.
New to digital health, or not sure where to start? Access up to five hours of tailored advice, mentoring, and support to help you plan and run a successful project, build your networks, and grow your digital health expertise.
Logic modelling workshops and early-stage risk reduction
We facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions and exploratory research that help match problem and solution, identify early risks, clarify outcomes, and provide a roadmap for next steps.
Staff, consumer, and community involvement
Want to co-design your project with health service staff, patients, and community members with a shared interest in shaping the future of digital health? We can help with specialist consumer and community involvement advice, networks, and support.
Early economic analysis
Identify potential budget holders and develop a business case for your digital tool based on existing evidence and robust methods.
Equity-informed user centred design
Design with the people and workflows that matter. Our equity-informed user-centered design approach engages patients, clinicians, and services early to surface real-world needs, reduce unintended risks, and deliver solutions that fit practice and are adopted at scale.
Software rapid risk triage
Get on the right track from day one by finding out if your solution will be regulated as a medical device and what you need to do to control data and cyber risks.
Developer, UX, and graphic designer rolodex
We’ll connect you to trusted developers and designers with digital health experience and a track-record of cost-effective, reliable delivery for research projects.
Development project management
Partner with us to embed one of our digital health development experts into your team to ensure a smooth development process.
Pre-Implementation validation and silent trial design
Partner with us to plan and execute a robust approach for validating your AI model with realistic data.
Clinical simulation studies
Why wait until pilot to discover key blockers? Apply human factors and implementation science to test and refine digital solutions and implementation strategies before pilot in a controlled, safe manner.
Early implementation studies
We bring the digital perspective to studies that test implementation strategies, facilitators, and barriers for new digital health solutions. We work collaboratively with implementation expertise already inside teams.
Pragmatic evaluation
We partner to design and run rigorous pragmatic evaluations for digital health and AI solutions for which a traditional RCT is inappropriate or not feasible.
Value analyses
Partner with us to quantify the economic value of your digital health solution, including financial impact and cost-effectiveness.
Impact stories
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Improving patient experience of telehealth with a consultation summary tool
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PredicTx: AI-powered chemotherapy precision dosing for colorectal cancer
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Impact Evaluation of a Digital Coordination Centre in a tertiary hospital
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Evaluation of AI-enabled transcription for hospital use through simulation testing
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Optimisation of an opportunistic mental health screening care model for general practice
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An AI-powered Learning Health System platform for Hospital Surveillance of invasive fungal infections
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Funding mechanisms for preventative health apps in primary care
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Simulation-primed co-design and workflow validation of a digitised Medical Attendance Statement
Why de-risking matters
De-risking is critical to avoid failure in digital health. These case studies highlight real-world failures globally and examine the critical gaps that allowed them to happen.
⚠︎ Deployed worldwide. Validated nowhere.
Epic's sepsis prediction algorithm missed two in every three cases. Pre-implementation validation would have caught it.
Read more⚠︎ Every user got the same diagnosis.
At least one Alzheimer's screening app returned a positive result regardless of what the user entered. Clinical oversight at the design stage would have caught it.
Read more⚠︎ Top rated. Clinically wrong.
The Instant Blood Pressure app was a bestseller — and it systematically underreported elevated readings. Independent validation would have caught it.
Read moreOur research collaborators
