Sintchenko V, Coiera E. The case for including microbial sequences in the electronic health record. Nat Med 29, 22–25 (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-02157-8

Integrating microbial sequencing data into electronic health records, while presenting privacy concerns, will improve patient care and population health and will expand the secondary uses of such data. The growing availability of microbial genomes sequenced for health care rather than research raises the question of whether such data should be included in an individual’s electronic

Coiera E, Liu S. Evidence synthesis, digital scribes, and translational challenges for artificial intelligence in healthcare. Cell Reports Medicine. 2022 Dec;12. Doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100860.

Summary: Healthcare has well-known challenges with safety, quality, and effectiveness, and many see artificial intelligence (AI) as essential to any solution. Emerging applications include the automated synthesis of best-practice research evidence including systematic reviews, which would ultimately see all clinical trial data published in a computational form for immediate synthesis. Digital scribes embed themselves in the

Fellowship by Training Program – Graduates

The CRE in Digital Health congratulates Dr Leanna Woods, Dr Mohamed Khalifa and Dr Tobias Hodgson on completing the Fellowship by Training Program (FbT). The NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Digital Health launched the program in November 2017 and has now partnered with the Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) in 2019 to deliver

Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for Australia

  Professor Enrico Coiera launched A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for Australia on 1 Dec 2021. The Roadmap was developed by the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAAiH) which is led by CRE in Digital Health investigators Professor Coiera, Professor Verspoor, Dr Hansen and Associate Professor Farah Magrabi. The Roadmap contains

2021 Brilliant women in Digital Health – Farah Magrabi

The CRE in Digital Health congratulates Associate Professor Farah Magrabi for being recognised in the Telstra Health’s 2021 Brilliant Women in Digital Health Awards. In its inaugural year, the 2021 Brilliant Women in Digital Health award initiative set out to recognise and celebrate women in digital health for their outstanding achievements, while raising awareness about

Human factors and ergonomics in healthcare AI – A White Paper

Associate Professor Farah Magrabi and Professor Wendy Rogers (both from Macquarie University) were invited to contribute to and review the Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare AI White Paper produced by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF). The aim of the paper is to promote systems thinking among those who develop, regulate,

AI healthcare researcher enrico coiera tops the field for federal funding

Bringing AI into the real world of healthcare The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recently awarded internationally recognised informatics expert Professor Enrico Coiera $1.5 million for the project: Bringing artificial intelligence into the real world of healthcare – the implementation challenge. The five-year research program will focus on three foundational challenges to bringing artificial

Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Decision Support

Challenges for Evaluating AI and Practical Implications Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform clinical decision-making processes as it has the potential to harness the vast amounts of genomic, biomarker, and phenotype data that is being generated across the health system including from health records and delivery systems, to improve the safety and quality of care

Whole-genome sequencing – lessons for public health surveillance

Genomic sequencing has proven vital in detecting the source and variants of COVID-19, improving contact tracing, reducing disease transmission and ensuring health security for Australia. But genomic sequencing isn’t new and researchers from the NHMRC Centre of Digital Health (CRE) have been investigating it’s use in cases from public surveillance of Salmonella Typhimurium, predicting antibiotic

Study finds “serious problems with privacy” in mobile health apps

Patients should be informed Media release from BMJ An in-depth analysis of more than 20,000 health related mobile applications (mHealth apps) published by The BMJ today (16 June 2021) finds “serious problems with privacy and inconsistent privacy practices.” The researchers say the collection of personal user information is “a pervasive practice” and that patients “should

Digital scribes and AI – how it impacts on primary care consultations

Can co-designing artificial intelligence tools with general practitioners deliver better patient outcomes and what impact will it have on Doctors? And what about the healthcare system? We took it to the test in a study with general practitioners simulating an AI documentation assistant for use in patient consultations. While artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly across

Tortorella GL, Saurin TA, Fogliatto FS, Rosa VM, Tonetto LM, Magrabi F. Impacts of Healthcare 4.0 digital technologies on the resilience of hospitals. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 2021;166:120666.

Healthcare 4.0 (H4.0) adapts principles and applications from the Industry 4.0 movement to healthcare, enabling real-time customization of care to patients and professionals. As such, H4.0 can potentially support resilient performance in healthcare systems, which refers to their adaptive capacity to cope with complexity. This paper explores the impact of ten H4.0 digital technologies on

Lyell D, Coiera E, Chen J, Shah P, Magrabi F. How machine learning is embedded to support clinician decision making: an analysis of FDA-approved medical devices. BMJ Health Care Inform. 2021 Apr;28(1):e100301. doi: 10.1136/bmjhci-2020-100301. PMID: 33853863; PMCID: PMC8054073.

Objective: To examine how and to what extent medical devices using machine learning (ML) support clinician decision making. Methods: We searched for medical devices that were (1) approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) up till February 2020; (2) intended for use by clinicians; (3) in clinical tasks or decisions and (4) used

Fernandez-Luque L, Kushniruk AW, Georgiou A, Basu J, Petersen C, Ronquillo C, Paton C, Nohr C, Kuziemsky C, Alhuwail D, Skiba D, Huesing E, Gabaron E, Borycki EM, Magrabi F, Denecke K, Topaz M, Al-Shorbaji N, Lacroix P, Cornet R, Iyengar S, Gogia SB, Kobayashi S, Deserno TM, Mettler T, Vimarlund V, Zhu X. Evidence-based health informatics as the foundation for the COVID-19 response: a joint call for action to transform hopes and hypes into realities. Methods of information in medicine. 2021;(accepted Jan 20).

Background: As a major public health crisis, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic demonstrates the urgent need for safe, effective, and evidence-based implementations of digital health. The urgency stems from the frequent tendency to focus attention on seemingly high promising digital health interventions despite being poorly validated in times of crisis. Aim: In this

Albarqouni L, Moynihan R, Clark J, Scott AM, Duggan A, Del Mar C. Head of bed elevation to relieve gastroesophageal reflux symptoms: a systematic review. BMC Fam Pract. 2021 Jan 19;22(1):24. doi: 10.1186/s12875-021-01369-0. PMID: 33468060; PMCID: PMC7816499.

Background: Overuse of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) – frequently used for relieving symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GORD) – raises long-term safety concerns, warranting evidence-based non-drug interventions. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate the effect of head-of-bed elevation on relieving symptoms of GORD in adults. Methods: We included controlled trials comparing the effect of