New program supports focus on digital healthcare as the future

1 Dec 2021

Australia’s healthcare system is struggling due to increasing demand, increasing burden of diseases and not enough resources.

The Australian Medical Association’s Vision for Australia’s Health stated that in 2018 to 2019, more than 8.3 million patients presented to a public hospital emergency department – an increase of 4.2 per cent on the previous year.

In an effort to meet that demand, health workers are able to enrol in a new course that recognises digital health as the way forward.

University of Queensland’s Associate Professor Clair Sullivan said the Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health (GCCIDH) helped reimagine health care through digital workflows.

“We need the ability to provide excellent digital care, make data-driven decisions, and then create new and innovative models of care,” she said.

“It’s with this staged approach to digitisation and innovation that we’ll reach demand with a limited resourcing profile.”

Developed with healthcare industry priorities in mind and through a partnership between UQ, Queensland Health and the Digital Health CRC, this program will take a strategic and measured approach in training people to be outstanding digital health practitioners.

Chief Operating Officer of the Digital Health CRC, Tara Czinner believes these courses will help upskill a new generation of healthcare professional.

“We’re proud to partner with UQ to launch the Graduate Certificate in Clinical Informatics and Digital Health (GCCIDH), courses that are specifically designed to foster a new generation of digital health practitioner,” she said.

The GCCIDH is delivered online by renowned experts in the fields of clinical, business, health economics, and Information Communication Technology, actively working with government and practicioners on the rollout of digital health.

The program can be completed part time across four semesters to suit the schedule of working students, and has a late semester start on 14 March 2022.

It consists of four two-unit courses: Digital Health Foundations, Digital Health in Action, Data and Analytics for Quality Improvement, and Re-imagining Healthcare to ensure graduates will be a flexible, agile, innovative agent of change transforming the future of digital health services in Australasia.  

This program supports three interrelated careers in digital health, each one providing multiple possible career paths:

  • Clinical career with clinical informatics and digital health for health professionals who see the need for clinical informatics in applying the latest disciplinary knowledge to serve and improve patient care.
  • Digital career with clinical informatics and digital health for IT staff, IT consultants, and other informaticians or in the start-up/technology sector who work in health services (or who wish to do so) and need to collaborate more closely with clinicians and patients. 
  • Executive career with clinical informatics and digital health for clinical, technical, or business staff within health services who wish to move up the executive leadership ranks and who understand that need for digital health knowledge as a prerequisite of innovations in large health services.   

For more information, visit UQ Future Students.

To discuss details of this program, please contact Faculty of Medicine’s Associate Professor Clair Sullivan, +61 7 334 65343, c.sullivan1@uq.edu.au or Faculty of Business, Economics and Law’s Professor Andrew Burton-Jones, +61 7 334 68172, abj@business.uq.edu.au

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