Learning Health System Academy

The LHS Academy is a non-credentialled professional development program open to fully qualified clinicians (Doctors, Nurses, Allied Health professionals) currently employed in the primary or tertiary healthcare setting.

This program aims to build core competencies required by participants to become transformation agents in a Learning Health System who can design, implement and evaluate innovative data-driven change and continuous improvement in health systems. By completion of the program, participants will be able to:

• work with, analyse and interpret routinely collected healthcare data
• design digital health innovations and tools that support clinical practice change
• test and measure the clinical benefits of digital health innovations
• understand how to design digital health innovations that can be implemented and are more likely to be adopted widely in the healthcare system.
• understand and apply principles of change management and adaptive leadership to lead the transformation of healthcare

Only 10 places are appointed to the Academy each year, plus one General Practitioner. Successful participants attend the Academy both onsite and virtual two days per week between February and December. Fellows undertake targeted active learning course-work to build the competencies required to contribute to Learning Health Systems and project-based learning to provide hands on experience in using health data to inform clinical practice and in digital health-enabled models of care.

Partial scholarships are available through the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health to support clinical backfill. Participants are released from duties by their organisation, without detriment to salary, to undertake the program.

Modules include:

The Centre for Digital Transformation of Health’s inter-disciplinary experts lead and facilitate learning in the three key domains of Learning Health Systems:

Case studies for chronic diseases such as diabetes have been informed by leading clinicians in the field utilising healthcare datasets and will be used to illustrate the application of the concepts learned as part of the course work.

The key differentiator of the Learning Health System Academy is the time spent (two days per week for at least eight months) on hands-on projects that cement the knowledge and skills required to become agents of transformation through digital and data-driven innovation.

Fellows are allocated to Special Interest Groups at the CDTH to provide subject matter expertise and academic mentorship. Fellows are also matched with a clinical mentor at their organisation to support project-based learnings and implementation.

Participants are expected to undertake micro-deliverables across the year to enhance their application of learnings. The end-of-year deliverable is an application to address future sustainability of the project (collaborative application for research grant funding, business case or industry pitch) or publication of findings.

Example 1: Use of EMR to reduce low value care

The transition from paper-based records to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) has transformed care delivery. EMRs are now broadly adopted across Australia offering more efficient workflows, reducing duplication, enhancing safety and enabling the collection of large amounts of patient-level data. In addition, computerised Clinical Decision Support (CDS) is now able to be leveraged to support physician decision making. CDS has long been used to prevent serious prescribing errors by alerting prescribers to key pharmacological interactions, presence of allergies or dose errors. However, it may also play a key role in directing clinicians away from ordering low value care. This project will aim to understand the role of EMR interventions in supporting the reduction of low value care in paediatrics.

Example 2: Implementation of app-based communication tool to provide real-time communication across site in STEMI management

Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) is the single largest cause of death in Australia with the subset of ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) representing approximately 40% of these deaths. The time critical nature of STEMI management relies on prompt diagnosis and coordinated systems of care across various health agencies to revascularise the compromised vessel. Time to treatment is a major determinant of mortality and morbidity and considered a key performance indicator for quality of care in STEMI management.

This project will aim to integrate an app-based communication software within an existing process of care to provide real-time communication and feedback between clinicians across internal departments and external agencies, assisting in clinical decision making, coordination of care and optimised overall system performance of STEMI management.

Eligible applicants must:

• Be a fully qualified Doctor (AHPRA registered and post-vocational training), Nurse (AHPRA registered) or Allied Health professional (AHPRA registered).
• Be employed at 0.5 FTE or over by a MACH-affiliated health service or as a GP.
• Want to gain clinical informatics and digital health expertise to share at the frontline.
• Have identified an important problem within their health service that aligns with the service strategic digital health priorities, has significant unmet need, and could be addressed with a LHS solution.
• Hold potential to become a leader in data-driven innovative care.
• Have written support from their manager to accompany their application (see application details below).

For GP applicants, written support should be from the Head of Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne.

Prior research experience is desirable.

Applications close 5pm, Monday 31 July 2023.

Successful candidates will be notified by end of September 2023

LHS Academy commence on 31 January 2024 with an orientation event.