Pilot study tests new way to study healthcare

The Sax Institute has launched a Pilot Study to test the feasibility of collecting health information from people who receive healthcare services across the public and private sectors.

The Health Insight Pilot Study is inviting a sample of people holding private health insurance to complete a survey on their health and wellbeing, with a focus on “person-centred outcomes” such as quality of life and social and economic participation, as well as disability and mental health.

The Pilot Study will offer early information on these outcomes, allowing investigators to assess engagement with the survey and the feasibility of seeking this information more widely.

The Pilot Study is being launched by the Sax Institute, an independent, not-for-profit organisation that works with governments and non-government organisations across Australia to ensure evidence from health research is used more widely to improve people’s lives. The Pilot Study is being supported by the Bupa Health Foundation, one of Australia’s leading charitable organisations in the health space.

Professor Emily Banks, Senior Adviser at the Sax Institute, who is leading the Pilot Study, said The Health Insight Pilot Study “is designed to generate new knowledge about health and healthcare to inform our long-term approach. It includes people who use the private health system as well as the public health system, so it’s really giving us insights across the board into health and healthcare for all Australians”.

Participation in the Pilot Study will be entirely voluntary, with invitations extended to a sample of Bupa health insurance policy holders. All data collected in the Study will be held exclusively by the Sax Institute in accordance with the approvals of the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee.

The Bupa Health Foundation is a separate entity from the Bupa health insurance business. Neither the Bupa Health Foundation nor Bupa will have will have custodianship of, or independent access to, Pilot Study data, and all decisions about how to use the data will be made independently by the Sax Institute, subject to ethical requirements.

Media enquiries:
Hugo Wilcken, hugo.wilcken@saxinstitute.org.au, 0451 122 146

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