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Research

Use of Health Roundtable Data For Research

The Health Roundtable inpatient episode data base is one of the largest non-governmental collections of hospital operational activity in the world.

We add over 7.2 million records per year for over 200 major public hospital facilities across Australia and New Zealand.

Data is available from 1996 to 2019 for 15 of the member organisations, and for at least four years for almost all other member hospitals.

The database has a wealth of diagnosis, procedure, and demographic data linked to hospital stays, and provides a mechanism to track episodes of the same patient over time for many member organisations. (However, there are no direct patient or hospital identifiers in the datasets).

The general intent of providing Health Roundtable data for secondary use is to assist in one or more of the goals:- 

  1. development of a better understanding of issues that will help improve the quality and safety of patient care in member hospitals and health services; 
  2. development of products that will help to better analyse hospital data and benchmark hospital service improvements; and 
  3. allow collaboration on projects that will improve the general advancement of scientific knowledge about patient disease, patient management and hospital and health service improvement. 

 

Health Roundtable data ownership and governance

All Health Roundtable data collected from member services remains the property of the individual participating services. All requests for the use of Health Roundtable data for research and/or publication purposes must be approved by the Health Roundtable Data Governance Committee (HRDG Committee) in advance, using the approved guidelines and processes outlined in this policy. The HRDG Committee acts as guardian of the Health Roundtable data on behalf of the data contributors. 

The Health Roundtable Honour code. This policy requires adherence to the Health Roundtable Honour code that states: No external distribution of data or conclusions based on Health Roundtable data is made without approval from the HRDG Committee who represent all data Health Roundtable data contributors, unless required by law.

 
Applying for access to Health Roundtable data for secondary use

All research activities using Health Roundtable data must meet the requirements of current Health Roundtable policy on Use of Health Roundtable data for Research (2017) (Download here)This policy document also contains the application process and forms. 

All applications for access to Health Roundtable data for secondary use require ethics approval to be obtained by an authorised Ethics Committee before data can be accessed or released.

 

Publication of results from the secondary use of Health Roundtable data.

If the recipient of Health Roundtable data for secondary use wishes to publish any findings or outcome of the research, a copy of the proposed publication and the intended publication site must be provided to the HRDG Committee for consideration. 

Download an application form here

Contact us
For more information on using Health Roundtable data for Research please contact our state or territory CRM's or send us an email at contact@healthroundtable.org.

Sydney Office

Suite 2, Level 10, 5 Blue Street

North Sydney, 2060

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In Australia: +61 (02) 8041 1421

In New Zealand: +64 3741 3123

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