Where to for digital health? The Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health action plan

Background

Australia’s healthcare system faces many challenges, including increasing consumer demands, an ageing population and declining workforce participation rates.¹ Significant disparities exist in disease severity, access to care and health outcomes. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, rural and remote communities, and people of lower socio-economic status, currently experience shorter life expectancies, higher disease burden and more preventable hospitalisations.¹

Despite the promise of digital technologies to improve health care, the patient experience remains fragmented,¹ and these advancements have, in some cases, exacerbated existing inequalities.² As 9.4% of Australians remain highly digitally excluded, the need to effectively apply data science and digital technology to strengthen healthcare delivery and health outcomes has never been greater.³

While digital health is an evolving field of knowledge and practice, its transformative potential has yet to be fully realised. Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy,⁴ roadmaps,^5,6 action plans^7,8 and blueprints⁹ define how this will happen through cross-sector partnerships. A national academic collaborative provides a new point of access to the expertise of Australia’s academic sector.

This paper reports the action plan for the Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health (the ‘Council’) across two priority healthcare challenges that require urgent attention in Australia:

Challenge 1: digital health research and innovation

Improving Australia’s health system requires research and effective translation. Despite over A$950 million in federal investment for digital health innovation in the 2023–24 budget,^9,10 there are critical limitations in storing and sharing health information for research;^5,10 embracing emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence;⁵ and monitoring outcomes at scale.⁵ Dedicated funding for multidisciplinary digital health research and academic–industry collaboration is limited.

Challenge 2: digital health education and workforce

Australia’s health workers are not prepared for digital health care. By 2050, health workers will need to provide four times the current level of service to meet anticipated demands.¹ Digital transformation has highlighted the significant impact on provider well-being,¹¹ a lack of interdisciplinary leadership in digital health care and an inability to harness digital capabilities for better patient care.¹⁰ In total, 40% of healthcare providers identified inadequate training and education as a barrier to adopting digital technologies.¹² Successful digital transformation of the health system requires investment in people, not just technology.¹⁰ There is often confusion between training and education when upskilling a healthcare workforce¹³ (Table 1).

The opportunity

Digital health is a powerful, transdisciplinary tool that can revolutionise health care and deliver the quintuple aim: improving population health, improving care team well-being, advancing health equity, improving the patient experience and reducing costs (Fig. 1).¹⁴ The quintuple aim of health care is now recognised as a comprehensive framework for evaluating the diverse outcomes of digital health initiatives.¹⁵ This framework carefully considers various stakeholders, maximises value and minimises potential drawbacks in the pursuit of digital health transformation.^16,17 As digital health evolves, peer-reviewed evidence is increasingly needed to support healthcare workforce capabilities, roles and ways of working. The need for interdisciplinary collaboration in the systematic design, development and introduction of digital health curricula in health workforce education is recognised on a global scale.^18,19 Peer-reviewed academic evidence is vital to successfully deliver the vision of Australia’s digital health future,^4–9 contributing to the health and economic prosperity of all Australians.

Fig. 1.

Quintuple aims of health care, adapted from.¹⁴

Harnessing transdisciplinary academia

Advancing digital health transformation in Australia requires effective engagement with the necessary range of academic expertise across and within our universities. The transdisciplinary nature of research, translation, development and implementation of digital health requires expertise from a broad range of academic domains, including data science, engineering, health professions, public health, healthcare management, business and commercial acumen and ethico-legal expertise. Efforts by governments, health providers, industry and other stakeholders often face difficulty in gaining transdisciplinary views or collective perspectives. Globally, the development and uptake of digital health benefits from cross-sectoral efforts from academia and industry²⁰ where practitioners and researchers have fruitful collaborations in understanding the complexities of digital transformation in health care.²¹ Academic alliances with universities are essential to drive collective action and progress in health care.

Establishment of the Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health

An environmental scan of a range of ‘Deans councils’ across disciplines revealed valuable lessons for establishing a digital health council in Australia. Integrating cross-disciplinary collaboration, clear leadership structures, strong governance, evidence-based decision-making, inclusivity, transparency and shared strategic oversight for long-term success and sustainability were supported by the Academic Leaders Digital Health Forum and a proposed Terms of Reference agreed and approved by the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) Board as the administering auspice.

The DHCRC formed the Council in 2024 to harness combined academic power to advance digital technology, informatics, and data science and its application to health in Australia. The Council has representation across all Australian jurisdictions and 37 member universities (Table 2). Recommendations for prioritised action by the Council and its collaborators were developed by analysis of meeting minutes (n = 7) and Terms of Reference documents (n = 3). A draft version of the actions was circulated to Executive members and iteratively formulated using a modified Delphi method.

Action plan

The Council action plan outlines the following priority actions to advance digital health research and education in Australia to improve healthcare outcomes (Box 1). Contributing to this agenda is the Council collaborating with the Australian Digital Health Agency to embed digital health education into university degrees. The initiative involves the development of nationally standardised core topics and learning plans through wide engagement with higher education providers, healthcare stakeholders and digital health subject matter experts. These education resources can then be customised locally to be embedded within undergraduate health degree curriculum of individual universities.

Conclusion

The Council is committed to providing strategic leadership and collective action to foster digital health advancements across Australia’s health and education sectors. This coordinated effort, in partnership with others, aims to address key challenges for sustainable, equitable, high-quality health care for all Australians.