Using smart technology to more effectively and efficiently monitor quality of cancer care
Mr Chris Mac Manus1, Ms Jo Dalvean1, Ms Tani Thomas1, Mr Nino Hay1, Ms Melanie Evans1, Ms Margaret Brand1, Professor John Zalcberg1, Professor Sue Evans2, Professor Chris Bain1
1Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
2Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
BACKGROUND
Clinical quality registries (CQRs) are mechanisms for monitoring the quality of health care delivered to a specific group of patients through the collection, analysis and reporting of health-related information. Hospital clinical data is one of the primary data sources, with the data collection and curation being both resource intensive and time consuming. This project has piloted the use of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard to automate the integration of hospital data into two Victorian CQRs managed by the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.
THE MONASH UNIVERSITY HELIX TEAM
FHIR was emerging in the Education space at the University, but this was the first foray in the Research domain. The technical team sought advice from industry experts to validate the architecture and used the engagement to better understand the technology.
With hospitals (largely) only able to provide data in CSV form, the team acquired the Spark FHIR server and defined the resource types that aligned to the CQR Data Dictionaries. Development of the data pipeline includes a data ingestion engine and an engine that extracts data using the FHIR API and feeds it into the relevant CQR.
Project benefits include:
-Automated hospital data collection
-Advance notification of Cancer patients for registry recruitment
-Ability to scale data collection to many other sites/hospitals with some technical development
FHIR at Monash University is now available for research projects and can be integrated into many different data pipeline use-cases with Helix providing the expertise and the capability.
Biography:
My career spans 16 years working professionally. I have worked 10 years in public health,
holding positions such as Information Architect, Manager Data Services, and Head of Information
Technology. My experience of the Victorian healthcare system and vast expertise in technology
affords me a unique mix of health and IT, in a management and leadership capacity.
My exposure to public health and multiple technology departments has given me a unique perspective on both health care and the technologies that drive them. I am passionate about heath care research and systems improvement and works hard to achieve goals.