Queensland University of Technology researchers have received a $1,491,992.40 NHMRC grant to develop and evaluate a framework for implementing AI in Australian health services.
Professor Steven McPhail from QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Work will lead the project, Building AI Launch Pads in Health Services: Accelerating Safe, Scalable, Evidence-Based AI Implementation and Sustainment.
The project will work with health services to develop locally tailored “AI Launchpads” designed to build the systems, workforce and organisational capacity needed to implement and sustain AI technologies.
Professor McPhail said relatively few AI technologies had progressed from small-scale trials into sustained use in Australian health services.
“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,” he 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.”
The launchpads will be implemented and evaluated with partner health organisations and are intended to support health services to procure proprietary AI products, adapt technologies developed elsewhere and develop and implement AI within their own environments.
Professor McPhail said health services with appropriate systems, structures and workforce would be better positioned to adopt AI while managing associated risks and costs.
“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.
Chief investigators on the project are Professor McPhail, Dr Sundresan Naicker, Associate Professor Amina Tariq and Professor Belinda Lange from QUT; Professor Clair Sullivan from the University of Queensland; Professor Ian Scott from Metro South Health; Professor Trisha Greenhalgh from the University of Oxford; Professor Melissa Baysari from the University of Sydney; Professor Gregory Aarons from the University of California San Diego; and Associate Professor Johan Verjans from the University of Adelaide.
Partner organisations include Queensland Health, 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, Microsoft Australia and the Australian Institute of Digital Health.
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