Embracing digital disruption using intelligent decision support for more responsive care, better patient outcomes and greater efficiency

Start Date

21 April 2020

End Date

30 September 2026

Project Participants

Metro South Hospitals & Health Service, Queensland University of Technology

Status: Completed

Tags: acute care, ambulatory care, clinical decision support, clinical deterioration, clinical governance, data analysis, digital transformation, electronic medical records, falls prediction, health system, hospital, interoperability, value-based care, virtual care, workflow optimisation

Opportunity 

Digital hospitals create significant opportunities to improve clinical safety, patient access and health-service efficiency. However, digital tools do not deliver value through technical performance alone. Health services need reliable ways to select the right problems, integrate technologies into complex workflows, support clinicians to use them appropriately, govern clinical and technical risk and understand the full cost of implementation and sustained operation.  

This project brought researchers and a health service partner together to evaluate the implementation of intelligent decision support solutions within a large public health service. 

Objectives 

This project sought to identify high-value opportunities for intelligent decision support systems, assess organisational readiness, understand the conditions required for successful adoption, and demonstrate the benefits of digital hospital systems in Queensland’s Metro South Hospital and Health Service. 

The objectives included: 

  • investigating the use of analytics and prediction models for key problem area events 
  • demonstrate the extent to these predictive models can produce actionable intelligence to guide clinical decisions if implemented in real-time 
  • identifying clinician and consumer preferences for interacting with intelligent decision support solutions 
  • evaluating the implementation of real-world decision-support systems 
  • developing economic models to understand the potential cost-effectiveness of this technology to inform investment decisions. 

The partnership delivered an integrated evidence base and practical capability for Metro South Hospital and Health Service, with key outputs such as:  

  • a gated digital-health demand-management process 
  • predictNMB, an open-source package supporting value-based prediction-model decisions 
  • evaluations of clinical decision support tools such as Q-ADDS, and AI for radiology and stroke imaging 
  • greater understanding of clinician and consumer preferences for AI-enabled decision support tools 
  • guidance for implementation and sustainment of clinical decision-support systems in a large health service 

The project also supported the successful completion of four PhD programs.

This project demonstrates how to shift towards value-driven digital transformation in hospitals with a focus on selecting, implementing and evaluating digital technologies across a complete lifecycle: starting with a genuine clinical or service need, continuing through co-design, implementation and local validation, and extending into monitoring, adaptation, scale-up and where relevant, decommissioning. 

Beyond the learnings and benefits for Metro South, the project strengthened methods for lifecycle costing and economic appraisal for digital health solutions, and generated practical guidance for digital health governance, training, interoperability and workflow design. The knowledge outputs can help Australian health services make safer, more transparent and more sustainable decisions about digital health.

Integrity, Excellence,
Teamwork and Authenticity

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