One of the greatest opportunities in healthcare is our ability to learn from the care we provide every day. Across our health system, clinicians, researchers, consumers, quality teams and data specialists are working to improve care, generate new evidence and translate that evidence into practice.
To support this work, I am pleased to share the release of the new Bridging Research and Quality (BRaQ) in Healthcare Resources Suite. BRaQ is a Victorian-wide initiative of the Victorian Research Translation Centre Collaborative (VRTCC), led by Monash Partners in collaboration with Melbourne Academic Centre for Health and Western Alliance Academic Health Science Centre. It aims to reduce duplication and delays for ethics and governance processes in health services.
Developed through extensive consultation with health services, researchers, consumers and governance leaders, the resources support a shift in how we think and talk about the many ways we evaluate and improve healthcare. Traditionally, activities such as quality assurance (QA), quality improvement (QI) and low-risk research (LRR) have often been treated as separate categories, with different language, processes and governance requirements.
BRaQ encourages us to look across the full spectrum of evaluation, improvement and research, rather than focusing solely on these labels. This helps us develop ethics and governance approaches that are fit-for-purpose and proportionate to the level of risk involved, while reducing unnecessary barriers to learning and improvement.
This is an important step towards developing a Learning Health System – one that uses data and experience from everyday care to generate knowledge, improve practice and continuously inform better care.
The release comes at a timely point in the year, with many of our Partner organisations preparing for their annual Research Week activities. These events provide an opportunity to showcase research achievements, foster collaboration and discuss how research, quality improvement, quality assurance and evaluation can work together more effectively to improve patient care.
I encourage you to explore how the BRaQ principles and resources could inform conversations, presentations and projects throughout Research Week and beyond, as we move towards a more connected approach to learning and improvement.
Together, we can continue building a Learning Health System that learns, improves and delivers greater impact for the communities we serve.
Read our Monash Partners Connections Newsletter August issue.
