Cabrini Health has become the inaugural health service to formally commit to a data sharing relationship across the Monash Partners’ organisation to facilitate safe, lawful and appropriate sharing of health data.
The Data Sharing Agreement and Principles, co-developed by Monash Partners, provides a consistent, thorough and informed approach to decisions about the sharing of data among our network of health, research and teaching organisations. Signing the Agreement demonstrates an organisation’s commitment to strengthening systems and processes for data sharing.
Monash Partners Executive Director, Professor Helena Teede said it was a significant step towards building a system of trust that allows for the efficient flow of healthcare information.
“The past years have seen a steep rise in the amount of health data being generated,” said Professor Teede.
“Access to data, for healthcare improvement and research, provides our greatest opportunity to unlock the value in this data and benefit the public through improvements in clinical care, prevention, screening and treatment.”
“The Data Sharing Agreement and Principles support the streamlining of efficient data access and sharing across our Partner organisations, and align with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), ‘Principles for accessing and using publicly funded data for health research’.”
“This system ensures we enhance patient care whilst keeping data secure,” said Professor Teede.
Cabrini Health Director Clinical Governance and Informatics, Dr David Rankin, said Cabrini welcomed the opportunity to formalise an agreement on data sharing. Dr Rankin said having clear rules around how data is shared provided comfort that data would be respected and protected.
“Data is the foundation on which decisions are made in healthcare,” Dr Rankin said.
“Being able to share data in a trusted and secure way enables Cabrini to compare its performance with other healthcare organisations. This relationship is critical in being able to identify areas for improvement and highlight where we perform well.”
Cabrini Research Director, Infrastructure, Anne Spence said data sharing allowed health services to look across a more comprehensive patient cohort to learn and plan future care for patients.
“All health services across Monash Partners will benefit from sharing de-identified information on patient outcomes facilitating research questions (and hopefully finding answers) that will lead to improved design of our health care services,” said Ms Spence.
Under the Data Sharing Agreement and Principles the purpose of data sharing can include but is not restricted to:
- Improved efficiencies occurring as the time taken for a decision related to data sharing is reduced
- Improved sharing of data across health organisations to enable and support health research
- Sharing of health data for aspects such as benchmarking, hospital acquired complications and risk management comparisons to be facilitated
- Optimisation of the compliance of Monash Partners organisations with privacy and other relevant regulations
- Reduction in risk of a breach of the privacy regulations
- Improved systems so those requesting the sharing of health data provide detailed information to enable informed decision making by organisations, and
- Those evaluating requests for data sharing to do so with a knowledge of, and consideration for, the privacy regulations.
The Monash Partners Council has endorsed progressing this work across our Partners with activities currently underway.
To view the Monash Partners Data Sharing Agreement and Principles, visit https://monashpartners.org.au/initiatives/monash-partners-data-sharing-agreement-and-principles/
Cabrini Health Director Clinical Governance and Informatics, Dr David Rankin, said Cabrini welcomed the opportunity to formalise an agreement on data sharing.
