Alpha NSW: What would it take to create a state-wide paediatric population-level learning health system?

Background: The health and well-being of children in the first 2000 days has a lasting effect on educational achievement and long-term chronic disease in later life. However, the lack of integration between high-quality data, analytic capacity and timely health improvement initiatives means practitioners, service leaders and policymakers cannot use data effectively to plan and evaluate early intervention services and monitor high-level health outcomes.

Objective: Our exploratory study aimed to develop an in-depth understanding of the system and clinical requirements of a state-wide paediatric learning health system (LHS) that uses routinely collected data to not only identify where the inequities and variation in care are, but also to also inform service development and delivery where it is needed most.

Method: Our approach included reviewing exemplars of how administrative data are used in Australia; consulting with clinical, policy and data stakeholders to determine their needs for a child health LHS; mapping the existing data points collected across the first 2000 days of a child's life and geospatially locating patterns of key indicators for child health needs.

Results: Our study identified the indicators that are available and accessible to inform service delivery and demonstrated the potential of using routinely collected administrative data to identify the gap between health needs and service availability.

Conclusion: We recommend improving data collection, accessibility and integration to establish a state-wide LHS, whereby there is a streamlined process for data cleaning, analysis and visualisation to help identify populations in need in a timely manner.