Health informatics: redefining inpatient hospital care

The importance of hospital admissions data to inform health policy has been evident over the past few years, with the pressure that the COVID-19 pandemic has put on hospital systems, from infection control to disruptions and delays to elective and health screening services. Hospital patient records provide an important source of information to inform health policy decisions on funding and patient outcomes. Most recently this has been demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, where hospitalisation levels and rates have informed public health measures to reduce pressure on the hospital system. Evidence-based decision making depends upon accurate and precise hospital statistics. Across Australian hospitals, and often elsewhere globally, a patient’s hospital care is defined in terms of episodes of care. These episodes of care can appear to be somewhat unintuitive under some circumstances, and can end when a patient is transferred between wards or hospitals. The successful candidate will evaluate the impacts of redefining hospital care into longer periods of care, which define periods of care from admission into the hospital system until discharge. This can be a more informative, and fair, approach to describing hospital care. This has been demonstrated to some extent within the UK’s hospital systems, and this Honours project will evaluate the potential benefits and consequences of applying these health informatic approaches in greater depth across Australian hospitals. The project would best suit a student with an interest in data analysis, computer programming, public health, or electronic medical records. Following the successful completion of this project we would seek publication of the research.