We know that health data linkage helps us better understand the patient journey across different parts of the health care system and supports commissioning of the right kind of services for GPs and their patients, where they are needed the most. But health service data in WA is not currently linked across the primary care and hospital sectors.
WA Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA) is working to develop a timely, automated, and scalable data linkage solution that encompasses the WA health sector.
Working with the Curtin Centre for Data Linkage and WA Health Data Linkage Unit, WAPHA will develop a proof-of-concept data linkage model to assess the impacts of our Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) intervention on hospital activity, health system cost savings and all-cause mortality.
The pilot project will utilise the de-identified data already collected by Primary Sense. This process will be governed by your existing Primary Sense Data Sharing Agreement, ensuring data is governed responsibly, privacy protected and securely stored and managed in Australia by the PHN-owned Primary Health Insights platform. Patient identifiers are irreversibly encoded and encrypted, and WAPHA will not receive identifying information of individuals or practices.
Primary Sense practices would have recently received more detailed information from WAPHA on the use of Primary Sense data for this research project and how to withdraw from participating in sharing their data prior to project commencement.
More information on data linkage is available here and practices are encouraged to email WAPHA Analytics and Insights Manager, Dr Christina Read with further questions.