Welcome to DHCRC’s final Newsletter of 2025. As we reach the end of a productive and purposeful year, we are all looking forward to recharging over the Christmas break. The end of 2025 also marks a significant milestone, with next year being the final year of our CRC funding agreement with the Department of Industry Science and Resources.
Over the past seven-plus years, we have built a unique network of government, industry, and university partners who all see the urgent case for reaffirming the central role of digital innovation and acceleration of digital transformation to address health system-wide demand pressures that are impacting the health needs of all Australians.
As we look ahead to 2026, we have a clear focus on our priorities, translation and commercial development of our legacy achievements, completion of our research program, and supporting our education initiatives, that have the potential to make large-scale lasting impact. These forward-looking discussions are central to ensuring that the investments made through the DHCRC endure well into the future.
As we enter next year our focus remains clear, creating self-sustaining legacies for our flagship initiatives. These include driving the digital transformation of aged care through Kinnexus, a technology solution for a standardised approach to the functional assessment of older Australians that links to mandatory quality indicator reporting and reduced manual data entry by aged care clinicians.
Making healthcare more efficient and effective through our ADAPt project by creating a near-real-time, standardised, secure data and analytics platform that provides safety, quality, and performance metrics to support national safety and quality standards for health services for accreditation and to empower clinical teams.
Embedding the important role of the Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health – a unique national peak body that unites senior representatives from 37 universities across Australia, providing a collective academic voice on digital health policy, research, and workforce innovation will also be a priority.
Our advocacy work around data as a national asset, productivity, and procurement remains vitally important to support a thriving ecosystem of home-grown health technology providers and delivering better outcomes for clinicians and patients.
From a research perspective, final reports from the NHMRC and SERD, will provide critical documents to guide future research priorities and investment.
Recent announcements from the Federal Government, including the creation of an AI Institute and an AI Action Plan, are welcome initiatives, but our experience shows, the evidence-base needed to scale up widespread adoption of AI in health is significantly lacking. The technology is moving fast, so the research needs to keep pace and remain agile.
Thank you to all our partners, researchers, supporters and the DHCRC Team whose commitment and collaboration have made this year such a success.
I look forward to working with you in the year ahead as we collectively ensure a lasting legacy for digital health innovation in Australia.
I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday period.
Warm regards,
Annette Schmiede
CEO, Digital Health CRC
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