Digital Health Unit – Human Capital Alliance

HCA has recently established a standalone digital health capability that builds on many years of supporting specialist digital health and health data quality companies in Australia and internationally. The Digital Health Unit brings together expertise in health information workforce and management of health information processes.

The Digital Health Unit has been formed to focus on supporting and working with Pacific Island countries and low and middle-income countries of Asia with identified needs to improve health and wellbeing outcomes through the better use of quality data. The Digital Health Unit is also committed to working with and supporting First Nations communities in Australia.

Vision and objectives

HCA’s vision is to improve population health and wellbeing outcomes through continuous improvement of digital health capacity.

This will be achieved by working with government health agencies and other health organisations to:

· assess, identify and recognise the value of high-quality health data that is timely, reliable and actionable

· build system and workforce capacity of digital health and data management through workforce planning and skills transfer and organisational and best practice capacity development

· support continuous improvement of digital health ecosystems through improvement of health information systems, infrastructure, processes and procedures, and design and implementation of applications and tools to manage health data.

Through these objectives, and in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Goal 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages), HCA is aiming to support:

_ seamless and secure exchange and use of health data at the population and individual level

_ individuals and communities will have accessible, equitable, universal, efficient, secure and sustainable healthcare.

Information Quality Advocate

HCA’s digital health unit has been attempting to conceive of a way to create and sustain structures to collect, safely store, and allow appropriate access to high quality data. This is an important issue in all countries but especially low and middle-income countries. HCA first introduced the concept of a data quality advocate at the 35th Patient Classification Systems International (PCSI) conference held in Reykjavik, and explored the competencies required for this role.

More recently, Director Lee Ridoutt represented HCA at the 36th PCSI conference, where he conducted a follow-up presentation on our initiatives since the previous conference. This included an update on our search for courses aligned with essential competencies identified for health sector information quality advocates (IQA). This research culminated in the publication of a pivotal paper titled “The Competencies Needed by Health Sector Information Quality Advocates,” featured in the Asia Pacific Journal of Health Management, which you can read in full here.

Lee’s presentation also discussed our follow-on research to better understand the context factors that influence IQA competence requirements and prioritise competencies most essential for information quality advocates.

We are pleased to announce the development of a Community of Practice that will continue to discuss and evolve the role of the IQA and create appropriate professional development opportunities. This Community of Practice will focus on issues of data quality in different health care settings, countries and digital maturity environments. We will be sending out invitations to join this Community soon, but if you want to ensure you don’t miss out on an invitation, register your interest HERE.