Thirty six universities join new digital health council
Thirty six universities have banded together to solve the pressing need to digitally train 200,000 more health workers in the coming decade.
Thirty six universities have banded together in response to the need to train Australia’s rapidly growing health workforce to use digital technologies that are taking over health care.
Annette Schmiede, CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre in Digital Health said that the new digital health council would guide universities in their strategies to teach these skills to students.
“We need a new workforce, we need something like 200,000 additional people in the digital health space in the next decade or so,” Ms Schmiede said.
Her centre is taking the lead in establishing the Australian Council of Senior Academic Leaders in Digital Health which will also co-ordinate research into the way digital health is being applied.
The new council is chaired by Clair Sullivan from the University of Queensland where she is director of the Queensland Digital Health Research Centre.
A key challenge is to train nurses and other health workers to use the burgeoning volume of data going into patient health records, and generated by diagnostic scans, so that the standard of health care is increased and is offered at an efficient cost.
“The council will provide an opportunity for the digital health research sector to engage with advocates from across health, technology and business,” Professor Sullivan said.
“This will help us promote best practice standards, education and training that fuels innovation, drives health system efficiency and sustainability, so contributing to better health outcomes for all Australians.”
The council will bring in experts from universities who are outside the traditional health care area – including law, informatics, cyber security and business – because of the breadth of challenges faced.
For example all the issues and problems around the adoption of artificial intelligence – such as privacy, copyright, and hallucinating AI systems – appear in the debate over digital health.
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