The Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) monitors the health, service utilisation, medication use, mortality, and other outcomes of people receiving aged care services in South Australia. ROSA’s efficient model leverages existing information, bringing together diverse datasets collected by different organisations throughout the country, to provide us with a whole picture of the ageing pathway. ROSA’s main aim is to produce evidence to guide decision-making for quality, coordinated, efficient, innovative and age-friendly services and practices. ROSA also has a ‘Living Lab’ component, which will provide support and infrastructure for trialling innovative and emerging ideas to improve the health and wellbeing of Senior Australians.

ROSA was established in 2017 by the Healthy Ageing Research Consortium, a cross-sectoral partnership of researchers, clinicians, aged care providers and consumer advocacy groups led by Professor Steve Wesselingh. ROSA’s partnership with end-users and consumer advocates ensures that the research it conducts addresses questions that are relevant to our ageing community, as well as to Government, NGO, Industry and researchers. ROSA is also working towards providing solutions with real-world impact.

In addition to the South Australian cohort prospectively enrolled in ROSA (enrolment started in April 2018), the Registry has a de-identified national historical cohort (1997-2017), which allows researchers to study the impact of changes to aged care policy and services over the last 20 years. These data will also allow the team to investigate risk factors for adverse health events and mortality; and assess and identify successful areas, and areas in need of improvement, in aged care and health services delivery.

Who we are

The ROSA Research Team and Coordinating Centre is located at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), led by Associate Professor Maria Inacio. The ROSA Team sits under the auspices of Health Translation SA. ROSA is the product of the Healthy Ageing Research Consortium, which is a collaboration between the  South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), 3 universities (University of Adelaide,  University of South Australia,and  Flinders University), 5 industry partners (Helping Hand,  Silver Chain,  Adelaide PHN,  Country SA PHN, ECH), 2 consumer health advocacy groups (COTA SA, HCASA), SA NT DataLink, and SA Health. Supported by the South Australian Government through the Premier’s Research and Industry Fund and the Department for Industry and Skills ( 2017 – 2021), this ambitious collaborative undertaking has created a unique data resource that facilitates the creation of evidence as a base for clinical decision-making and support of older Australians accessing aged care services.

Key objectives

Our key objectives are to:

• Establish and maintain the ROSA, which is a unique data collection platform with analytic capability to guide evidence-driven decision making for quality, coordinated, efficient and age-friendly services and practices;
• Support the conduct of health and medical research to answer the questions of industry, NGO and government sectors in relation to positive and healthy ageing;
• Produce evidence for cost-effective service innovations, models of care and other solutions for the sector;
• Enable the monitoring of the quality of ageing over time;
• Promote community engagement and intergenerational learning;
• Generate direct employment change through research, changes in business and service delivery models, plus broader economic development opportunities generated by positive ageing; and
• Support the ‘Living Laboratory’, which is a resource for trialling new and emerging ideas.

ROSA Stage 1 Historical Cohort Report

ROSA received the Stage 1 (historical national data) from the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (AIHW) in January 2018. This includes records from 2.9 million people from 1997-2014 who were assessed for or accessed aged care services. The ROSA Stage 1 Historical Cohort Report is now freely available for you to download.

The ROSA Team

Current ROSA Steering Committee members:

• Prof Steve Wesselingh (SAHMRI)
• Ms Liddy Griffith (SAHMRI)
• Prof Craig Whitehead (Flinders University & SA Health)
• Prof Renuka Visvanathan (University of Adelaide & SA Health)
• Prof Julie Ratcliffe (Flinders University)
• Prof Andrew Beer (University of South Australia)
• Prof Karen Reynolds (Flinders University)
• Ms Jeanette Walters (SA Health)
• Ms Jane Mussared (COTA SA)
• Ms Julia Overton (HCASA)
• Mr Andrew Stanley (SA NT DataLink)
• Ms Megan Corlis (Helping Hand)
• Ms Amber Watt/ Victoria Cornell (ECH)
• A/Prof Caroline Miller (SAHMRI)
• Ms Inara Beecher (Country SA PHN)
• Prof Keith Evans (Silver Chain)
• Mr Malcolm Ellis (Adelaide PHN)

ROSA Research Team:

• A/Prof Maria Inacio, ROSA Director
• Dr Sarah Bray, ROSA Senior Research Officer & Consumer Engagement Officer
• Ms Catherine Lang, ROSA Analytical Programmer
• Dr Stephanie Harrison, ROSA Postdoctoral researcher 
• Dr Tiffany Gill, ROSA Postdoctoral researcher
• Dr Jyoti Khadka, ROSA Postdoctoral researcher
• Dr Azmeraw Amare, ROSA Postdoctoral researcher and Statistician
• Dr Max Moldoran, ROSA Senior Data Scientist
• Dr Janet Sluggett, NHMRC ECF
• Dr Robert Jorissen, ROSA Postdoctoral Researcher