However, as a registered charity and a partnership between the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Local Health District, HMRI researchers rely on philanthropic donations from the community to support their operations.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with HMRI, which has included support for research into asthma, physical activity and the innovative Daughters and Dads Active and Empowered programme, Port Waratah has invested more than $300,000 over four years to help fund an exciting clinical informatics project.

The project is helping researchers and clinicians to efficiently unlock and interpret the wealth of existing health system data to help prevent and fight disease and improve patient outcomes. One of the project’s achieved priorities is linking data across disparate and unconnected data bases and finding patterns in clinical data sets. The use of big data, in the form of “clinical informatics”, is rapidly growing across Australia and the world.

HMRI Senior Health Informatician, Shaun Grady said, 

“The health system is data rich and information poor. Extracting reliable health data benefits both patients and the community by supporting a broad range of clinical research that accelerates translational research to improve health care, health systems, and patient outcomes.”

“By making aggregated and anonymous patient data more available, researchers and clinicians can identify new clusters of disease and answer important questions to improve the health of our communities, identify research priorities and save time and money.”

The partnership has provided invaluable assistance, support or advice to over 200 individual researchers, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Some of the most significant research project areas that this philanthropic support has made possible with long reaching impact to patients, clinicians and HMRI’s overall capabilities and capacity to drive medical research through innovative use of data science, include:

• Data sharing and collaboration
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Cardiovascular health
• Maternal and child health
• Cancer research and patient care
• Innovation in healthcare delivery
• Public health and quality of care
• Technology and telemedicine

This project has significantly contributed to the growth and validation of the Consolidated Research Database (CORDS). This valuable resource now contains data from 2.78 million unique patients panning 28 years of activity. This comprehensive database has become a cornerstone for driving data-driven medical research in the region.

The unlocked data is being used in a pioneering Power BI report aimed at streamlining the prioritization and booking of surgeries with the Local Health District.

Associate Director Data Sciences, Associate Professor Chris Oldmeadow, said of the dashboard, “This data literally saves lives by assisting in managing critical wait lists to identify which patients cannot wait and must be prioritised to save lives and improve patient outcomes. It has been transformative and lifechanging.”

The project has also uncovered a number of potentially promising longer-term benefits that are underway such as improving the health outcomes for patients undergoing colorectal cancer surgery, through to a rollout of a machine learning-capable data infrastructure to accelerate future patient treatment insights.

“The investment by Port Waratah is a significant boost to research infrastructure. Clinical informatics has the potential to encourage private sector investment in research, such as pharmaceutical companies investing in drug trials in the Hunter. Our partnerships with the business community are vital in gaining other funding to offer hope and find answers that save lives.”

L-R: Associate Director Data Sciences, Chris Oldmeadow with Head of Philanthropy, Dr Giavanna Angeli and Senior Health Informatician, Sean Grady.