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Alpha NSW: What would it take to create a state-wide paediatric population-level learning health system?
Michael Hodgins1, Nora Samir1, Susan Woolfenden1,2
1University of New South Wales, Australia.
Insights
Improving data systems for children's first 2000 days is crucial. A state-wide learning health system (LHS) can use routine data to identify and address health inequities for better child outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Child Health Informatics
- Public Health Systems
- Learning Health Systems
Background:
- The first 2000 days of a child's life significantly impact long-term health and educational outcomes.
- Current data integration challenges hinder effective planning and evaluation of early intervention services.
- Lack of accessible data limits the ability of stakeholders to monitor high-level health outcomes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To understand system and clinical requirements for a state-wide paediatric learning health system (LHS).
- To explore using routinely collected data for identifying health inequities and care variations.
- To inform service development and delivery based on identified needs.
Main Methods:
- Reviewed Australian administrative data use cases.
- Consulted with clinical, policy, and data stakeholders on LHS needs.
- Mapped child health indicators and their geographic distribution during the first 2000 days.
Main Results:
- Identified key indicators available and accessible for informing service delivery.
- Demonstrated the potential of administrative data to reveal gaps between health needs and service availability.
- Highlighted the need for better data utilization to pinpoint areas requiring intervention.
Conclusions:
- Recommends enhancing data collection, accessibility, and integration for a state-wide LHS.
- Advocates for streamlined data processes (cleaning, analysis, visualization) for timely identification of at-risk populations.
- Emphasizes the importance of a robust LHS for improving child health outcomes.
Background:
The health and well-being of children in the first 2000 days has a lasting effect on educational achievement and long-term chronic disease in later life. However, the lack of integration between high-quality data, analytic capacity and timely health improvement initiatives means practitioners, service leaders and policymakers cannot use data effectively to plan and evaluate early intervention services and monitor high-level health outcomes.
Objective:
Our exploratory study aimed to develop an in-depth understanding of the system and clinical requirements of a state-wide paediatric learning health system (LHS) that uses routinely collected data to not only identify where the inequities and variation in care are, but also to also inform service development and delivery where it is needed most.
Method:
Our approach included reviewing exemplars of how administrative data are used in Australia; consulting with clinical, policy and data stakeholders to determine their needs for a child health LHS; mapping the existing data points collected across the first 2000 days of a child's life and geospatially locating patterns of key indicators for child health needs.
Results:
Our study identified the indicators that are available and accessible to inform service delivery and demonstrated the potential of using routinely collected administrative data to identify the gap between health needs and service availability.
Conclusion:
We recommend improving data collection, accessibility and integration to establish a state-wide LHS, whereby there is a streamlined process for data cleaning, analysis and visualisation to help identify populations in need in a timely manner.
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