Data collected and linked from a range of care settings – including hospitals, general practice and outpatient services – is giving health practitioners a clearer picture of population health, and the evidence base they need to provide effective and tailored treatment options.
Here at the University, the Curtin Health Research and Data Analytics Hub has been established to extend our ability to use very large sets of health data and to train the future health workforce in using data.
Our strengths
Clinical trials and data infrastructure
Researchers in our Centre for Data Linkage are providing data linkage services capable of linking and managing health and non-health data in a secure ISO27001 certified environment. They’ve developed software that preserves strong privacy protections, and tools to maximise high standards and consistency in results. Their work is key to developing new technologies and will improve health outcomes at individual, community and population levels.
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Data analytics
Curtin has expertise in data analytic techniques and quantitative research methodology. Our researchers work across a number of disciplines including epidemiology and biostatistics, health economics and artificial intelligence in health.
One team is embarking on a project to understand how a COVID-19 outbreak could spread within high-risk populations across Western Australia. The results of the study, which gathers data from the WA population, will provide real-world data to help health authorities, policymakers and ultimately the community. Another team is identifying the risk factors for chronic diseases and adverse outcomes in pregnancy and early life.
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Policy implementation and evaluation
Curtin’s research outcomes can be applied to a range of healthcare areas to inform policy making and evaluation, and to identify gaps in service provision.
For example, The Navigating Through Life project highlights the importance of program evaluation to identify responses that best meet the needs of marginalised groups. The program focuses on the outcomes for young people who are leaving out of home care and how we can better meet their cultural, social and developmental needs. The project also demonstrates Curtin’s strong range of capabilities from linkage of population data through to the lived experience of individuals, all of which contribute to the project’s translation to policy and practice reforms.
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Telehealth for remote communities
Together with researchers from the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre and La Trobe University we’ve developed the Telehealth Hub, to improve health care access and availability for regional and remote communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Telehealth Hub lets health care providers, patients and carers meet and access care virtually. It also brings together information on telehealth technology.
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Key people
Professor Suzanne Robinson
DISCIPLINES
Health care policy management, Health economics, Health services management.
John Curtin Distinguished Professor Christopher Reid
DISCIPLINES
Cardiovascular epidemiology, Clinical trial and cohort studies, Health outcomes, Hypertension, Prevention.
John Curtin Distinguished Professor Donna Chung
Dr Kevin Chai
DISCIPLINES
Artificial intelligence, Computer vision, Data mining, Health informatics, Machine learning, Natural language processing.