Personal Ambulatory Monitoring (Core Project 2)
This project made use of ICT innovations for monitoring and self-management of stroke patients to overcome high care demands and homecare distance barriers. The first phase was a clinical trial of high-technology, low-bandwidth medical devices and related data monitoring services for post-stroke hospital patients with fall risk, in collaboration with the stroke rehabilitation ward at The Prince Charles Hospital. The clinical trial produced a large body of results for detailed analysis. More...
e-Health Metadata and Ontologies (Core Project 5)
The e-Health Research Centre is investigating metadata and ontologies tools for use in the Australian health care and life sciences domain to support medical research and improve health care.
Metadata and ontologies are tools that can be applied to documents and other data sources which enable the user to query (ask questions of) the underlying data sources in a more sophisticated, structured and meaningful manner. More...
Feasibility Study - Rehabilitation
Assessment Decision Support (RADS)
(Core Project 4)
Currently, there are no tools that can remotely perform accurate, quantitative assessments of mobility and physical activity status in rehabilitation. The e-Health Research Centre investigated the feasibility and development of a decision support tool, the Rehabilitation Assessment Decision Support (RADS) Tool, to assist patients to self-manage their own care and assist clinicians and allied health workers to remotely assess and enhance the progress of patients in rehabilitation. More...
Primary Care Electronic Health Document Exchange (EDoX) (Partner Project 1)
An adaptive software environment known as Primary Care Electronic Health Document Exchange (EDoX) which can display patient summary details according to varied healthcare circumstances was formally reviewed by the e-Health Research Centre for the Brisbane North Division of General Practice (BNDGP), and strategies for its future enhancement and extension were developed.
EDoX allows key data collected by GPs - such as information on allergies or what medication a patient is taking - to be shared with other local healthcare facilities in a bid to provide a better quality and safer service to patients.
Image-Quality-Sensitive Watermarking of Medical Images (Partner Project 2)
Radiology, pathology and other associated medical imaging activities are moving rapidly towards all-digital ("filmless") operational environments, allowing these images to be accessed and viewed more easily and by a much wider audience of users than at present.
The e-Health Research Centre, in collaboration with NICTA Queensland, has completed the development and pilot implementation of a novel technique for embedding hidden "watermark" information in medical image data files which would be useful for enhancing security and privacy protection. At the same time, this approach allowed estimation of the amount of data loss (if any) that has occurred to an image due to successive transmission and storage operations (including compression). This is important in ensuring that safety and quality standards are maintained, by protecting patient data from misuse by allowing ownership and access information to be embedded, and protecting health sector users from unknowingly using degraded data for critical clinical purposes. More...
Royal Melbourne Hospital CRC Data Integration (Affiliate Project 3)
Colorectal cancer is the most prevalent form of newly diagnosed cancer affecting Australians, affecting one in 21 people. While the exact cause of colorectal cancer is unknown, some people are at higher risk due to familial factors such as inherited genetic mutations. However, colorectal cancer can be successfully treated if detected early in its development, and community participation in screening programmes is important. In collaboration with the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the e-Health Research Centre’s Health Data Integration (HDI) software was utilised to analyse over 25 years of comprehensive Bowel Cancer Screening information.
To date the work has looked at details of the sensitivity and specificity of Faecal Occult Blood Testing (FOBT) as compared with Colonoscopy as a gold standard of colorectal cancer detection in an asymptomatic above average risk cohort, surveillance outcomes for high risk groups such as those with both parents affected by colorectal cancer, and outcomes for those with gene mutations known to increase their risk of colorectal cancer. Further analysis including relationships between surgical outcomes and the surveillance programme may also be performed in the future, utilising linkage between disparate databases. The value of FOBT testing to detect interval cancers, and the optimal frequency for intervention in a colonoscopy-based screening programme was also evaluated.
Flinders Medical Centre CRC Data Integration (Affiliate Project 4)
Again focusing on the area of colorectal cancer is our ongoing work with Flinders Medical Centre and the Repatriation General Hospital in Adelaide. Early work in this project was aimed at colorectal cancer surgical patients, and their related colonoscopy outcomes through the linking of several different databases. Further work will be directed at any areas of interest arising from the initial analysis.
