Posted on November 27, 2024 / by HTL / in Bulletin

NIIN Health Alliance Bulletin – Nov 2024

November 2024

The National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN) is a dynamic network that brings together industry, university and government partners to drive digital technology advancements in economy and society. With its ready-to-access capability and existing infrastructure, the NIIN Health Alliance provides a low-risk avenue for health agencies and hospital operators to engage in innovation activities. The NIIN Innovation Centrals, Research Chairs, health-focused labs, and specialised technology centres serve as a collaborative hub for industry, health agencies, hospital operators, researchers, and students tackling critical healthcare challenges, collectively using digital innovation.

We are well and truly into the thick of Q1 of 2025 and we are looking forward to a whole host of NIIN Health Alliance led initiatives and activities for the coming year, which we hope you will fully leverage, participate in and benefit from.

As always, please get in touch with us to find out how you can be more involved!

Prof Vishaal Kishore

Executive Chair
RMIT Health Transformation Lab

NIIN Health Alliance Highlights

NIIN Health Alliance Summit 2024

The Singapore NIIN Health Alliance Summit 2024 was held successfully last month, attended by 38 participants from 20 organisations across industry, universities and health providers. The main summit programme covered 16 presentation and panel sessions, involved 25 presenters, which resulted in a highly engaged and participative summit.

The summit discussed the latest trends and technological innovations in digital health, including our recently released Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-25, as well as the many challenges and opportunities as observed by the participants. A key session of the summit provided the 8 NIIN university partners a critical opportunity to highlight a shortlist of exciting projects for the NIIN community to explore collaborative support and commitment amongst NIIN partners.

Another highlight of the summit was the hosting of the summit evening reception on October 8th, by the Australian High Commissioner, His Excellency Allaster Cox, at his official residence in Singapore.

A post-Summit report provides a short summary of the event as well as next steps for NIIN partners.

Industry Sponsors:

Launched: Inaugural NIIN Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-2025

The inaugural Health x Digital Transformation Report 2024-2025 has been launched by the NIIN Health Alliance in September 2024! An actionable and practical guide designed to spearhead the integration of digital technologies within the health sector, this report highlighted the latest digital heath trends that will fuel the next wave of digital health transformation. It also showcased research and innovation projects from across the NIIN. Please visit the interactive online report or download a PDF copy here.

This report will serve as a comprehensive roadmap to detailing the ‘what,’ the ‘how,’ and the ‘where’ to initiate transformative changes in healthcare technology. It will bring together a diverse array of stakeholders, including healthcare providers, technologists, government policymakers, researchers, and academic institutions, to foster a collaborative environment under one unified vision.

Looking ahead, the NIIN Health Alliance will continue its lead role in producing the report for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 editions. This ongoing effort underscores our commitment to advancing digital health practices and exemplifies the power of partnership in driving meaningful progress. Together, we celebrate this success and look forward to continued innovation and collaboration.

NIIN Health Alliance going beyond at Cisco Live 2024!

The NIIN Health Alliance stood up an impressive stand at this month’s Cisco Live 2024 Melbourne conference, attended by over 7,000 attendees from across the Asia Pacific region, from November 11th to 14th at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre. We showcased a health technology pop-up sandbox covering the following use cases – fall detection, altercation, space analysis, and robotic services delivery. We also showcased the Health & Digital Transformation 2024-2025 Report, as well as various projects from NIIN partners like the Digital Health Design Lab at Flinders University, and the Innovation Central Canberra.

Designing the Digital Ambulance

Led by Cisco in South Australia (SA) in partnership with the SA Ambulance Service, the Digital Ambulance Project is looking to transform how technology can create a ‘connected vehicle’ to improve patient outcomes. The project has both clinical and non-clinical streams, including streamlining vehicle use and asset tracking and involves collaborators from Flinders University.

Early field trials have already demonstrated the critical value of connectivity in rural and remote locations, by providing Secure Corporate Wi-Fi connectivity, thereby allowing access to clinical applications in areas where cellular and radio network coverage is inaccessible.

Showcase @ Innovation Central Canberra

The Digital Health Showcase held at the Innovation Central Canberra (ICC) on September 17th, 2024, was designed to accelerate the pace of digital innovation in healthcare. It involved health experts from industry, government and universities to ensure both demand and supply sides of the health sector were represented.

The event involved presentations from experts, with an interactive showcase where startups, students, innovators demonstrated their health applications and answered questions from healthcare providers at the front line of delivery. A summary of the major themes and innovations covered at the Showcase can be found in the attached ICC whitepaper.

RMIT together with Cisco & Grampians Health secures Victoria Govt Skills Solutions Partnership $900K Grant

A NIIN Health Alliance consortium led by RMIT and including Grampians Health, and Cisco, has successfully secured a co-investment grant funding, through the Victoria Government Skills Solutions Partnership programme, to develop 5 Digital Skills for Health courses to upskill at least 300 Grampians Health workforce in a pilot that will stretch from July 2024 to June 2025. The consortium will work to extend courses from the Cisco Networking Academy and RMIT College of Vocational Education to address skills gap in digital health innovation and settings.

Accelerator participant NanoCube Health awarded $3M CRC grant for early detection & treatment of pancreatic cancer

The MedTech Actuator recently shared that a past participant in its Accelerator program has recently been awarded a $3M Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) grant to develop its Duobots technology for minimally invasive, biopsy-free tissue analysis for early pancreatic cancer detection.

The MedTech Actuator continues to be a critical source of innovators for NIIN partners to collaborate and partners with in digital health technology innovation.

NIIN Research Chair Program Spotlight

Professor Trish Williams is the Cisco Research Chair and Professor in Digital Health Systems at Flinders University in South Australia, Director of the Flinders Digital Health Research Centre and the Cisco-Flinders Digital Health Design Lab. As International Co-Chair of HL7 Security, and Australian expert on security, software and safety on health informatics ISO standards (Technical Committee 215), she builds on over 30 years of experience in healthcare computing, including 15 years industry experience in general practice and pharmarcy computing.

Trish has a strong focus on the translation of research into practical application, demonstration of the contribution that digital health technologies can make to support healthcare, and the use of information security as an enabler for improved heathcare communication and interoperability.

Trish’s recent projects include: zero trust security for healthcare, healthcare critical infrastructure and cascading failure, igniting supported living, information infrastructure to experience, cybersecure medical devices, and safe hospital wireless.