Middleware Supporting Next Generation Data Analytics in Australia.

In Australia, as a result of the distributed, often private nature of health provision, tight privacy legislation, even tighter organizational policies, access to data covering the whole patient journey of care is a common aspiration that has been almost impossible to achieve. Access to primary care data in a manner that is record-linkable has been a particular challenge. Since 2006 The University of Melbourne has been developing GRHANITE™ Middleware and GRHANITE™ Data Linkage technologies designed to overcome these barriers. With over 10% of Australian primary care data now being routinely extracted utilising this technology, we believe the principal technical challenges have now been overcome. We believe this technology to be at the forefront ethically of providing data for research. This poster describes the principal issues involved and the approaches taken in the technical solution underpinning GRHANITE™.