Professor Steven McPhail, from QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Work, has been awarded an NHMRC grant of $1,491,992.40 for the project, Building AI Launch Pads in Health Services: Accelerating Safe, Scalable, Evidence-Based AI Implementation and Sustainment.
Professor McPhail, from QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Worksaid artificial intelligence held the potential to improve health outcomes, patient experience, efficiency of health systems, clinician well-being, and equity.
“Despite this potential for improvement and many small-scale pilot trials, it is perhaps surprising that relatively few AI technologies have been implemented and sustained in everyday practice in Australian health services,” Professor McPhail said.
“This project brings together leading experts in AI implementation and some of Australia’s most innovative health service organisations to co-design and implement health system capacity building strategies to support the implementation and sustainment of effective AI solutions in real-world healthcare delivery systems.
“An important foundation of this project is working with consumers, community and clinicians, alongside digital health researchers and industry, to build ‘AI Launchpads’ tailored to local needs, capacity and requirements.”
Professor McPhail said it was a pivotal moment for AI use in healthcare, and that the health services that had appropriate systems, structures and workforce would be best positioned to harness the potential benefits of AI while also mitigating risks.
“They will be able to employ AI to not only improve patient care but also improve efficiency while managing AI-related risks and costs in alignment with consumer expectations and social licence,” he said.
“We will implement and evaluate ‘AI Launchpads’ by working with our excellent partner healthcare organisations, who are leading the way by seeking to ensure they are well-equipped to: procure and implement proprietary AI solutions; adapt AI solutions from other services to local contexts; or develop, implement evaluate AI solutions within their local enterprise environment.”
The chief investigators on this project are Professor McPhail, Dr Sundresan Naicker, Associate Professor Amina Tariq, and Professor Belinda Lange, all from QUTs Australian Centre for Health Services Innovation and Centre for Healthcare Transformation; Professor Clair Sullivan, The University of Queensland; Professor Ian Scott, Metro South Health; Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, University of Oxford; Professor Melissa Baysari University of Sydney, Professor Gregory Aarons from University of California San Diego; Associate Professor Johan Verjans, The University of Adelaide.
Associate Investigators are Dr Jack Roberts, Dr John Paul Kuwornu, Becki Cook, Professor Sandeep Reddy and Professor Olivier Salvado, Dr Thomasina Donovan all from QUT; Dan Kent and Tina Chen, health consumers; Dr Anton van der Vegt, The University of Queensland and Dr Andrew Goodman, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Partnering organisations include Metro South Hospital and Health Service; Children’s Health Queensland; Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service; West Moreton Hospital and Health Service; Mackay Hospital and Health Service; Queensland Health; Microsoft Australia; Australian Institute of Digital Health.
(Image, left to right: l/r- Professor Belinda Lange, Professor Sandeep Reddy, Dr Thomasina Donovan, Dr Jack Roberts, Professor Steven McPhail, Dr Sundresan Naicker, Associate Professor Amina Tariq, Dr Paul Kuwornu and Ms Becki Cook.)
