What is Health Analytics Research Collaborative (HARC)?
Health Translation SA (HTSA), which aims to accelerate the translation of health and medical research findings into policy, education, and clinical practice to improve health outcomes, is establishing the Health Analytics Research Collaborative (HARC). HARC will bring together members of the research community, including clinical researchers, registry analysts and data scientists, to boost collaboration and further develop the data analytic capacity in South Australia (SA). HARC will work closely with health services to consolidate and build upon the analytic expertise that is already available across the state to ensure it generates robust information to address health service challenges.
HARC’s vision is to mobilise and connect the expert analytic capability within the academic and research sectors to realize the potential of relevant information sources to enhance policy, practice and care across the health system. HARC will engage with both primary and acute health services and associated stakeholders, including the community and consumers, to work towards this vision.
This project is supported by the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) as part of the Rapid Applied Research Translation program. (MRF9100005).
How will HARC work?
- HARC will work with research teams and key stakeholders to facilitate health data analyses that are relevant and impactful. It will also work to build capacity in data analytics across SA.
- HARC will work with all HTSA partners to ensure that the processes and outcomes of this work will be as collaborative and inclusive as possible.
- HARC will be inclusive of the broader South Australian health analytics research community and ensure diversity of expertise, disciplines, geographic and institutional location, gender, roles and career stage and engagement of consumers and the community. HARC membership will be open to all interested individuals and research groups.
HARC Leadership Group
The HARC Leadership Group will provide strategic scientific direction, guidance for research priorities and expert methodological leadership and be responsible for the selection of exemplar projects and for the appointment of key personnel including Data/Informatics Fellows.
HARC aims to help enable the development of the next generation of data science leaders in research. A cohort of Data/Informatics Fellows (3 FTE) and a Senior Data/Informatics Fellow (1FTE) will be recruited in either part-time (0.5FTE) or full-time positions.
Led by the Senior Fellow, these Fellows will undertake research analyses on exemplar projects that will use data to understand and inform current health service challenges. These roles will undertake planning, execution, analysis, dissemination and management of these exemplar projects.
Some of these positions will work with the Clinical Networks that are soon to be established by the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health. A mentoring and training program will be associated with these fellowships.
Working in partnership, Health Translation SA and the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health (CEIH) have invested in a two year project to employ four full time equivalent data fellow positions.
The fellows will develop innovative approaches to address contemporary health challenges. They will collaborate with the health care system, researchers, and the greater community to create data-driven insights that support the translation of research into practice. The positions are funded by the Medical Research Future Fund and the CEIH.
The data fellows, who bring a rich and diverse range of skills and experience have undergone a unique induction program and will have access to a range of resources including CEIH staff, clinical networks and the HARC Leadership Group – an advisory and strategic group of specialists that will support the data fellows throughout their projects.
The Fellows
Owen Churches
Owen completed his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and worked in the pharmaceutical industry and academia before joining the public service in South Australia where he worked on child mortality data. In 2019 he won a Churchill Fellowship and returned to the United Kingdom to study systems for ethically and legally using artificial intelligence in government decision making.
Greer Humphrey
Greer has over 10 years of experience in statistical analysis and modelling in the fields of engineering and health. She has an interest in developing new skills and techniques for the translation of complex data into interpretable output.
Lan Kelly
Lan is a biostatiscian with over 10 years’ experience working in academia and government. Her interests include public health, statistical methodology and epidemiology.
Lukah Dykes
Lukah is an analyst and software engineer with an inspiration for artificial intelligence and integrated health systems. He is passionate about creating scalable systems with reactive microservices architectures, actor-based concurrency, and real-time analytics. His favourite technologies are the Scala and R programming languages, the Akka actor toolkit, the Lagom microservices framework, and the streaming libraries Kafka and Akka Streams. His research has considered real-time analytics in emergency care to support medical decision making for patients with potential acute coronary syndrome.
