A dashboard of predictive analytics and decision support: Improving the quality of aged care in Australia

Description

The quality of aged care is a concern for all Australians. The ongoing Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety indicates a system facing significant challenges. Australians need better quality aged care and greater transparency; a system that responds to older peoples’ needs, identifies when they are at risk, and answers in effective and compassionate ways.

Our aged care sector is data rich but information poor. Although providers now collect vast amounts of electronic clinical and care management data, very little attention has been placed on the power of analytics to exploit this data to deliver actionable information about aged care quality. This includes enabling preventive action by creating predictive risk models to provide earlier identification of older Australians who are at risk of adverse events, and implementing real-time integrated data views, such as clinical dashboards, that provide overviews and alerts of areas of care requiring attention.

Aims

This is a five-year mixed-methods study that aims to:

1. Co-develop an aged care dashboard which presents a visual overview of key indicators and embedded decision support to guide care decisions in residential and community-based aged care settings
2. Identify and assess design and work process features which support the integration of dashboard use and decision support by multiple user groups (e.g. facility managers, staff and GPs, clients/families) into their everyday practice and lives
3. Implement and evaluate the impact of the dashboard on evidence-based care decisions (e.g. medication use) and client outcomes (e.g. hospitalisations; client reported wellbeing) using a hybrid stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial, and process and economic evaluations.

Professor Nick Goodwin from the CCRI is acting as an International Advisor to the project.

Check out more on the project website!