Centre for Health Informatics

Centre for Health Informatics

The Centre for Health Informatics (CHI) researches the design and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies to drive fundamental changes in healthcare and ensure we have a sustainable and patient-centred healthcare system. CHI is a multidisciplinary team of research scientists with backgrounds in medicine, biomedical engineering, computer science, pharmacology, electrical engineering, data science, information technology, clinical science, philosophy, bioinformatics, and nursing.

The Centre for Health Informatics is Australia's largest and longest running academic research group in digital health and is one of four research centres within the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI).

CHI also leads the:

Working with national and international collaborators, our research focus is on patient safety, precision health and consumer informatics. With our industry and clinical partners, we use machine learning to create predictive models for a range of diseases and clinical challenges. To ensure technology use is effective, safe and ethical, we identify methods for identification and surveillance of digital health failures.

Working closely with consumers, we use novel research methods to understand their needs and journey, and translate these into new digital tools to help them navigate their lives. Our students study the impact of artificial intelligence and digital tools on the management of events such as massive transfusions, chronic disease states, consumers health literacy and decision-making, shared-electronic health records, and the use of mobile technologies and apps.

Our collaborators and partners include Bond University, The University of Melbourne, University College London and Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, Australian Commission for Quality and Safety in Healthcare, Australian Digital Health Agency, CSIRO Australian E-health Research Centre and CSIRO Data61, Agency for Clinical Innovation, Therapeutic Goods Administration, Local Health Districts, Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie Cyber Security Hub, Melanoma Institute Australia, Harrison.ai, Annalise.ai, Fujitsu, Telstra Health, Nuvilab and BCal Diagnostics.

Centre mission

Driving change in healthcare and biomedicine by making contributions to:

SCIENCE

Break-through discoveries in computational, communication, cognitive and organisational science needed to support health service innovation and biomedical researchers.

POLICY

Providing expert input and leadership into government, shaping eHealth and digital health policy priorities and goals.

INNOVATION

Invention of novel information technologies and methods that can transfer into industry and health services.

EDUCATION

Training future researchers through postgraduate research degrees, and educating clinicians, technologists and policy makers in health informatics through postgraduate programs.

Research areas

AI Systems Safety

Digital health and artificial intelligence systems (AI) are integral to the modern day transformations of healthcare delivery systems to ensure their sustainability. Digital technologies are also a key enabler for encouraging patients to actively participate in healthcare processes for diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Read more

Climate Change and Digital Health

The Climate Change and Digital Health stream aims to respond to the health impact of climate change using digital technology. Managing data during health crises can be complex; digital health is a central solution to enable healthcare systems to respond efficiently. Read more

Clinical AI and Sensing Technologies

The Clinical AI and Sensing Technologies stream focuses on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to develop patient models and personalised predictions of diagnosis and care. The stream also studies how sensing can be used to predict medical conditions, and how clinicians and patients interact with health technologies. Read more.

Consumer Informatics

Focusing on those with the highest stake in our healthcare system, our research program investigates the impact, design, and science of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on consumers, patients and their carers. Our research program is unique nationally and internationally, focusing on the impact of consumer eHealth, the design of consumer eHealth and the science of consumer eHealth. Read more

Translational AI for Healthcare

The past decade has seen substantive progress in artificial intelligence (AI) technological development, most notable in machine learning. In the application space, intelligent systems that use deep neural network architectures are now emerging from clinical trial and slowly moving into routine care. Read more

Our people

Our people come from diverse backgrounds – academic, industry, clinical and professional. You can find people with expertise in health informatics, artificial intelligence (AI), digital health, app development, medicine, pharmacy, bio-medical engineering, patient safety, information technology and data science.

Director, Centre for Health Informatics

Professor Enrico Coiera

Professor Coiera has worked in health informatics for over three decades and has a wide range of interests in the application of information and communication technologies (eHealth, Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence in Health) to solving health service delivery problems. He emphasises the importance of working on inpatient clinical problems, as well as developing robust theoretical work to support the applied nature of much of this discipline.

Professor Coiera is a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and founded the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAAiH).



Academic staff

Professional staff

  • Ms Denise Tsiros

    Ms Denise Tsiros
    Operations and Finance Manager

  • Ms Pippa Dorricott

    Ms Pippa Dorricott
    Business Manager

  • Ms Kalissa Brooke-Cowden

    Ms Kalissa Brooke-Cowden
    Research Assistant

  • Mr Satya Vedantam

    Mr Satya Vedantam
    Software Developer

  • Ms Leonie Bates

    Ms Leonie Bates
    Research Officer

Visiting appointments

Higher degree research students

Ronnie TaibPhD
Saba AkbarPhD
Dr Thilo SchulerPhD
Mehnaz TabassumPhD
Dr Nino SusantoPhD
Moomna WaheedPhD
Andrew ParsonsonPhD
Nida AfzalPhD
Mayes BarakPhD
Homay Danaei MehrPhD
Kanesha WardPhD
Kalissa Brooke-Cowden PhD
Saranjit SinghPhD
Winnie LiPhD
Somayeh FarahaniPhD
Claire KellyPhD
Tam MarwoodMasters Research
Cynthia WongMasters Research

Our projects

Our projects focus on mapping the complex organisational systems of health systems; developing intelligent systems to support evidence-based health care; developing and applying evaluation tools to assess the impacts of information technology safety in health care; and designing system-wide interventions to provide a sustainable platform for future health systems.

Key projects

Our resources

CHI has developed a suite of tools and resources relevant to researchers, clinicians, medical practitioners, healthcare and government policy makers, students, and industry.

Our resources

Artificial Intelligence

About CHI

Webinars

Books and book chapters

  1. Yin K, Lau AYS. Field methods: interviews, focus groups, survey, and observations. In: Valdez RS, Holden RJ, editors. The patient factor. United States: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group; 2021. p. 167–78.
  2. Tomitsch M, Wrigley C, Borthwick M, Ahmadpour N, Frawley J, Kocaballi AB, Nunez-Pacheco C, Straker K, Loke L. Design. Think. Make. Break. Repeat. A Handbook of Methods. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: BIS Publishers; 2018
  3. Lau, A. Participatory Health through Social Media, 1st Ed from Shabbir Syed-Abdul, Elia Gabarron. Academic Press, 2016
  4. Coiera E.Guide to Health Informatics. 3rd ed. United Kingdom: CRC Press Imprint; 2015.
  5. Sintchenko, V (Ed).Infectious disease Informatics, Springer, 2010
  6. Sintchenko V. Decision by design: Decision support for antibiotic prescribing in critical care. Saarbrucken: VDM-Verlag Dr Müller; 2009.
  7. Westbrook JI, Coiera EW, Callen JL, Aarts J (eds). Information technology in Health Care 2007, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology in Health Care; Socio-technical approaches, IOS Press, 311pp.
  8. Lau, A.The impact of cognitive biases on information searching and decision making, UNSW, 2006
  9. Fieshi M, Coiera E, Li Y (eds). Proceedings of the 11th World Congress on Medical Informatics – Medinfo 2004, IOS Press, 2 vols.

Annual reports

For the latest report go to the Resources page.

From 2014, all Annual Reports are incorporated within the Australian Institute of Health Innovation Annual Report.

Content owner: Australian Institute of Health Innovation Last updated: 28 Feb 2024 1:34pm

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