Posted: 14 May 2024
Today, Monash University, Monash Health and Novartis announced a unique Australian partnership in the fight against cardiovascular disease – Australia’s most significant health challenge responsible for 1 in 4 deaths and claiming an Australian life every 12 minutes.
The strategic partnership brings together the strengths of academia, the public health network and industry to work collaboratively to deliver education, innovation and clinical trials that can respond quickly to sector need.
With an initial focus on digital health infrastructure, the partnership facilitates grant funding that will see the creation of the Coronary Heart Disease and Heart Failure analytics driven ‘Living Lab’.
This initiative will leverage clinical data to create tools including visual dashboards to aid in identifying opportunities in care and risk management, supporting clinicians to make real-time decisions for lipid (cholesterol) management and heart failure.
Program Director of Monash Health’s Victorian Heart Hospital and Director of Monash University’s Victorian Heart Institute, Professor Stephen Nicholls says that while patients are living longer, managing heart conditions is becoming more complex and costly.
“Despite having more therapies available, almost half of the patients who have had a cardiovascular event aren’t reaching their cholesterol targets, and heart failure remains the second highest cause for unplanned hospital readmission in Victoria. The reasons for this are often nuanced,” he said.
“There’s a significant opportunity to improve patient outcomes if we develop the tools to unlock the insights a data-driven approach to care can provide”, says Professor Derek Chew, Service Director of Monash Health’s Victorian Heart Hospital and Director of Health Informatics Research at Monash University’s Victorian Heart Institute.
“At the core of our partnership is the power of real-world clinical level data. Utilising this effectively at a variety of clinical touch points – general practice vs emergency departments and general medicine in-patient units – is key to enhancing optimal management of patients.”
“It’s exciting that through innovative partnerships we can make complex information more accessible and readily translatable into action,” he said.
“This initiative may not only help save lives but also has the potential to reduce burden heart disease has on our communities and healthcare costs. This may be a pilot in Victoria, but it has scope to be rolled out nation-wide,” Professor Nicholls added.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Matt Zeller, Country President, Novartis Australia and New Zealand said, “As we tackle the burden of Cardiovascular Disease, we must work together to advance research, innovate using data and analytics, and build new models of clinical decision making and patient care.
“We are proud to be collaborating with Monash University and Monash Health. Their unique model of care and pursuit of the use of advanced analytics will hopefully create real-time feedback loops that can give us better visibility not just of the burden of CVD but also what solutions are, and are not, working for patients.
We hope that by working together with all stakeholders across the ecosystem we can help to advance tangible improvements for Australian patients now and in the future,” said Zeller.
About Lipid Management and Heart Failure
Coronary artery disease develops over time and causes the vessels that supply the heart muscle with blood to narrow or to become blocked due to the build-up of plaque on the vessel walls. Elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels contributes to this plaque build-up and can lead to a heart event such as a stroke or heart attack. Yet, despite the importance of controlling LDL-C levels, approximately 500,000 Australians have LDL-C levels higher than the recommended targets, leaving them at risk of a heart attack or a repeat heart attack. 3
It is estimated that over 60,000 Australians are diagnosed with heart failure each year, with over 480,000 Australian estimated to be currently affected by heart failure. This manifests as over 150,000 hospitalisations each year consuming in excess of >1,000,000 bed days in hospital per annum.4
It is estimated that 20% of heart failure patient are re-admitted to hospital within 30 days and >50% are re-admitted within 12 months of their last hospitalisation, and as there are significant opportunities to improve heart failure care.
