A new paper by the Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health (ACSALDH) warns Australia is in danger of continually funding standalone projects without building the national research infrastructure needed to scale innovation across the health system.
It says clear guidance on best practice for digital health research teams would advance whole-of-country research outcomes.
“The current concern is that digital health will progress only through isolated ‘proof of concept’ research that does not transform system-level processes and practices.”
Based on a survey which sought the perspectives of 37 ACSALDH member universities, the paper “Optimising National Competitive Research Funding for Digital Health” advocates for new collaborative models to ultimately deliver better value from nationally funded digital health research capabilities.
One university member wrote, “Australia needs a more systematic translational digital health research environment, including standardised platforms, tools, and methods, to improve on the present situation.
“Considerable funding is going to non-scalable, non-sustainable projects under the leadership of well-intentioned investigators who, unfortunately, are unaware of local, national, or international good practices for digital health data access, and for design, development, implementation, and evaluation of innovations.”
ACSALDH Chair Professor Clair Sullivan Director, Queensland Digital Health Centre (QDHeC) University of Queensland told Pulse+IT the establishment of the national council in 2024 had been a “watershed moment” for digital health in Australia, bringing universities together for the first time to collectively shape and support the sector.
“For the first time, we have all Australian universities united and able to consider and evolve the digital health landscape,” she said.
“Our universities are where innovation occurs. It’s where education occurs. And so for us to have a strong digital health presence nationally is critical for the health of the ecosystem.”
Professor Sullivan said the paper aimed to better understand how to support the digital health ecosystem, particularly as the discipline continues to evolve.
“Digital health is a new discipline that combines clinical expertise with technical expertise,” she said.
“We haven’t had a new discipline like this for some time, and so of course we’re going to be trying to understand what this new discipline is and how to fund it.”
She said a key finding from the survey was the emergence of isolated standalone projects that struggle to survive beyond initial grant funding.
“These types of projects can be developed in isolation, which is wonderful, but then you need to consider how to fund them once the project capital expenditure is exhausted,” she said.
“That’s very hard from a granting body because their job is to fund projects, not business as usual. So we need to reimagine what that looks like as an ecosystem.”
The growth of digital health ecosystems over the past decade had changed the expectations placed on innovation projects.
“Five or 10 years ago, you could create an app or a standalone application and then hope it could be easily adopted by the health system,” Professor Sullivan said.
“But what’s happened in the last five to 10 years is that sophisticated digital ecosystems have sprung up in our healthcare systems. Your innovation really needs to integrate or be part of the existing ecosystem for it to be successful.”
A transdisciplinary profession
Professor Sullivan described digital health as “the ultimate transdisciplinary profession”, requiring collaboration across clinical, technical and social domains.
“Clinicians can’t do it by themselves and technical people can’t do it by themselves,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful melting pot of expertise, but the struggle is then which funding pot do you go to? Is it too technical for the clinical funders? Is it too clinical for the technical funders? We tend to fall in a little chasm between the two.”
She said digital health research increasingly involved collaboration beyond traditional science and medicine.
“We collaborate with social scientists, with anthropologists, with economists, because this is really about human behaviour, not just technology,” she said.
She also acknowledged the role of the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre in building collaboration across the sector.
“We have really been supported by the Digital Health CRC, and it has fostered this collaboration across Australia,” she said.
“I think why it has been successful is because it was dedicated digital health funding. From the outset, it was all about transdisciplinary working.”
However, she said researchers still face uncertainty navigating funding pathways across agencies such as the Medical Research Future Fund, National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council.
“Sometimes it can be a little bit tricky to understand if your project needs to go to the MRFF or NHMRC or if it needs to go to ARC, because they fund different things,” she said.
“I think we’re still learning as a group where to target our applications, and I think our funders are still learning about what digital health is and how to fund it. There’s learning needed on all sides of the ecosystem.”
Reflecting on how the field has evolved, Professor Sullivan said digital health had shifted from a niche discipline to something embedded across the entire health sector.
“But now I almost feel like the word digital health is redundant. It’s just health because it’s everywhere.”
Looking ahead, Professor Sullivan said Australia was well positioned to become a global leader if funding mechanisms evolved to better support complex digital health research.
“Digital health is enabling huge amounts of progress in models of care, artificial intelligence and better health outcomes.
“To fund research into this area, we need targeted and innovative funding calls, which account for the transdisciplinary nature of digital health and the complex technical requirements it brings.
“And I think if we can achieve that, Australia is well on its way to being a global leader in digital health enabling better health outcomes.”
Written by Heather Fletcher, Pulse IT
