The Victorian Budget 2021-2022 is investing a massive $6.58 billion over five years into the State's health services. Of this investment $1.6 billion will go towards new infrastructure, a record $3.8 billion will go towards expanding mental health services, and almost $100 million will go towards improving aged care. The 10th annual Victorian Healthcare Week is the State's exclusive healthcare hub. In its 10th year, Victorian Healthcare Week unites health services to achieve inter-disciplinary collaboration and standardised care across hospital design and development, digital health, patient experience, nursing & midwifery, & start ups.

Prof. Jane Andrews is the Medical Lead for Gastroenterology, General and GI Surgery in the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, a senior gastroenterologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Clinical Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide. Jane will be joining us at Victorian Healthcare Week to share with us How the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (TQEH) is harnessing value from digital innovation for patients and staff reducing patient waitlist times, enabling self-assessment of health and predicting health deterioration risk at the ward level. We sat down with Prof. Andrews to discuss her journey further and find out from her, why she is excited about joining the VHW speaker faculty.

Prof Andrews, Tell us a little bit about the work you have been a part of in your career and what you'll be sharing with the community in December at Healthcare Week?

have a long history of active participation in the Gastroenterological Society of Australia (GESA) activities, through GESA’s educational arm (previously the DHF), twice chairing the GESA AGW Scientific Program Committee and as an inaugural member and then Chair of the IBD Faculty. I have been on the GESA board for several years and is currently serving my last term. I chaired the group which built the GESA tool to enhance community care of FGiDs www.IBS4GPs.com. I've been working in a less clinical environment in recent years and looking at more system based managerial models of care management. My background started off re-designing care for people with inflammatory bowel disease and, i've learnt that pro-active care is more successful than re-active care. This has led to innovation projects towards giving people the opportunity to self-service and take control of their own health journey. Recently, we developed an non-specialised dependant pathway for people referred to Gastroenterology. This platform recognises that persistent non-specific gut pain and bowel disturbance are a source of concern and frustration for patients. In collaboration with experts in functional gut disorders and GPs, IBS4GPs provides a way for doctors to appropriately assess symptoms, make confident diagnosis and provide effective treatment.

We've also been looking at other ways to make care more efficient through web based information and digital tools. In particular, we developed a platform called Personify Care to develop a digital end-to-end pathway for colonoscopy and endoscopy. This platform invites, via mobile phone, patients to participate in a digital pathway to do their own health screening. This platform also allows our teams to automate the COVID-19 questionnaire which takes away the time spent asking repetitive questions to patients, allowing them to do it themselves.

What challenges within the health system do these innovative project attempt to solve and are there any results you're particularly proud of?

Across Australia, patient wait times and the shortage of staffing resources and their time spent with patients is severely under pressure. These tools were set up to directly reduce patient wait times for specialised treatment, elective surgeries and their pre-hospitals admission processes, as well as free up staff time that could be better utilised in other, more pressing areas. IBS4GPS unlocks capacity in the system by eliminating several manual tasks which are tedious and repetitive and gives time back to staff to support patients who require more care. In terms of elective surgeries, the Personify platform notifies patients about their wait times, when to come in, appointments, when to fast before surgery and provides other information that a person would typically have done before. This has been successful thus far, as we've seen reduced wait times by over 70% which is such a huge amount of time for patients and health practitioners. This kind of reduction in time frees up opportunity for further improvement and innovation in this areas as well.

"If things are going the wrong direction, it can see if you're trending into risk of deterioration and alert emergency nurse respondents."

We've also been using trend-based prediction software that looks into the risk of deterioration in patients in order to identify whether they could become more unwell, post surgery or whilst in our care. We are trialling EMR trend-based alerting with an AI-powered trigger system that links observational chart data together to predict and prevent deterioration risks in patients. By predicting and preventing these risks, health practitioners can re-distribute their time and resources towards patients most at risk of further complications, alleviate resources from those who may not need attentive care, decrease occupied beds in ICU and make care and practices, overall, a lot safer for patients.

What is your advice for hospitals or health services that are looking to embark on similar journey's to your own?

My advice would be to find the right people to champion the initiative. Speak to people who have done it before and join events like Healthcare Week so you can compare your own journey to others and find out how you could improve your projects. We don't need to re-invent the wheel if it isn't broken, if another team have worked on a similar project, ask them how they did it and find out what you can do to improve. Expose yourself to other industries as well. Australia's healthcare industry does perform behind other industries in regard to digital innovation and transformation. However, other industries, such as banking, have developed incredible digital transformation projects that could be replicated in some way back to health. It's very important to broaden your knowledge base.

What are you most looking forward to about joining us at Victorian Healthcare Week in December?

It has been wonderful to connect with people, digitally, over the past few years. However, I am looking forward to connecting and speaking with people face-to-face. Events like VHW create an ability to innovate as a community. There are certain conversations that you can have over a coffee that may never had happened through a scheduled zoom call once you've established free time, sent calendar invites, set up the zoom links etc. I am also really looking forward to showcasing what we're doing in Adelaide and sharing our insights and experiences so others can learn from us. I am also just excited to pick up on some new shiny ideas from other people and see what they're doing.