Using practice analytics to understand variation and support re-flective practice: A protocol for a comprehensive digital health re-search program (Preprint)

BACKGROUND There is an increasing quantity of electronic data sitting within the health system. This data has untapped potential to improve clinical practice if extracted efficiently and harnessed to change the behavior of health professionals. Furthermore, there is an in-creasing expectation by government and peak bodies that both individual health pro-fessionals and healthcare organisations will be utilising electronic data for licensing and accreditation. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to understand how digital technology for harnessing elec-tronic health data can be used effectively by health professionals to support practice reflection. METHODS A multidisciplinary approach was used to connect academic experts from core disci-plines of Health and Medicine, Education and Learning Sciences, and Engineering and Information Communication Technology (ICT) with government and health services partners to identify key problems preventing the healthcare industry from using elec-tronic data to support health professional learning. The approach was used to design a large-scale research program to solve this problem. The program will be delivered by doctoral candidates undertaking research projects with discrete aims that run in paral-lel to achieve the program’s overarching objectives. RESULTS The research program commenced in March 2020. Since this time four PhD Candidates have commenced their research projects. Preliminary findings are expected from indi-vidual projects in late 2021. CONCLUSIONS The approach used in this research program has potential to successfully unpack elec-tronic data siloed within clinical sites and enable health professionals to use it to reflect on their practice and deliver high quality care. Key outputs of the program will include fostering stronger connections between industry and academia, interlinking doctoral research projects to solve complex problems, the creation of new knowledge for clinical sites on how data can be used to understand performance and strengthening profes-sional development programs to align them with clinical practice. Key contributions of this paper include presenting a description of Practice Analytics, and describing the foundational academic disciplines that contribute to it. It will also present a method for designing a Practice Analytics research program.