From an Australian public hospital-first delivering ‘Incisionless Surgery’ to transform the lives of people with tremors, to a new solution to remotely support people with chronic disease who’d otherwise need to revisit the emergency department and a pilot program harnessing virtual reality technology for pain management that is now going statewide, Gold Coast Health is leading the way in healthcare innovation.
With Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) the first public hospital, and only the third hospital in Australia, to introduce trans-cranial MRI-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) technology, Gold Coast Health is happy to celebrate instant success – almost as happy as 74-year-old patient Neville Waterstrom.
“I’ve been experiencing Essential Tremors for the last 30 years. It’s been incredibly difficult to do even simple tasks like feed myself, and drinking out of a glass was just not a possibility,” Mr Waterstrom says.
This procedure has completely changed my life.
“I haven’t been able to write properly for at least 20 years, and now – it’s just amazing. I can drink a glass of water again, and this is just one hour after the procedure. The joy and privilege I feel is immeasurable as the first person in Queensland to receive this treatment. I just want to thank everybody that has been involved, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
The so-called ‘Incisionless Surgery” is a non-invasive procedure which uses MRI to locate and treat areas of the brain that trigger symptoms of movement disorders – patients don’t require anaesthetic, are awake during surgery and can potentially be discharged the very next day.
For Gold Coast Health Medical Director Neurology, Dr Sam Heshmat the service launch was a moment of pride in the teamwork that brought different specialists together to change lives.
“To see a significant change in a patient’s functional capacity within a few hours, to see them gain back some independence after so many years, it’s just priceless,” says Dr Heshmat.
“This service is unique as it involves a group of clinicians from different specialties. Neurologists, neurosurgeons, and our radiology colleagues all play a role within each patient’s journey. We also have a Nurse Navigator, which is a newly created position specifically for this service.”
This cross-disciplinary team approach is key to how Gold Coast Health is embracing a future-focused culture of patient-centric innovation – bringing different types of clinicians together with data-scientists, software developers, analysts, AI and automation experts and external partners to lead solutions for Gold Coast patients, with potential to take them into hospitals nationally and even globally.
Leading an ambitious transformation agenda since his arrival three years ago, Executive Director Strategy, Transformation and Major Capital and Chief Digital Officer Sandip Kumar, recently told Hospitals Management Asia that Gold Coast Health was committed to a ‘Smart Hospital’ driven by a seamless and integrated digital health environment.
“At Gold Coast Health we have branded our ServiceNow platform – CareNow. The idea is that we are using technology to enable care anywhere and care now,” explains Mr Kumar.
An example is staff being able to take smartphone photos of wounds, securely upload them to a patient’s integrated electronic medical record (ieMR) for clinical consultants to make rapid care decisions. This pioneering application won a 2023 Queensland Premier’s Award of Excellence for Better Health and Wellbeing Services.
Another is the digitisation of patient lists. A program nicknamed Kirra has digitised outpatient appointments, cutting time to book a single appointment from 5 minutes to 60 secs, and avoiding scheduling issues and wasted appointments.
Billed as intelligent notetaking, ‘Ambient Listening’ is being explored to use natural language processing (NLP), a form of AI, to listen in on doctor-patient consultations, create summaries of relevant conversations, and generate alerts for services such as X-rays if required, without retaining any audio files.
Innovation is occurring across remote patient monitoring and wearables, workflow and demand management processes, communication automation, medical imaging, models of care, robotics and augmented reality, and more.
One exciting innovation is a Virtual Reality program for pain management, led by Darren Doherty, specialist pain physiotherapist and the team at the Interdisciplinary Persistent Pain Clinic, including occupational therapist Hannah Kennedy.
“What we’re attempting to do is supercharge pain education for our patients,” says Mr Doherty, who says the fun program also has a rehabilitation element.
VR provides an immersive leaning environment, that quickly empowers patients to adapt their behaviours, according to Ms Kennedy.
“What we’re seeing is patients seem to be really engaged with the education, relating that to their situation and really quickly are keen to make changes to activities, movements and their day-to-day life,” says Ms Kennedy.
With the success of a six-month trial, and powerful learnings from participating in the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct’s Clinician Entrepreneurship Change Agents Program (CECAP), Kennedy had the confidence to successfully pitch the program to Queensland Health for statewide roll-out across specialist pain clinics.
Innovations like Incisionless Surgery and the VR for Pain Management program have an obvious tech component, but behind-the-scenes process innovation is also utilising transformative technology for high impact.
Australian technology company FOXO partnered with Gold Coast Health to launch the digitally-enabled Rapid Access Service in General Medicine, leveraging FOXO’s market-leading expertise in secure unified communications, in what is a game-changer for reducing emergency department readmissions of patients with chronic conditions.
Discharging patients receive a take-home card, with a customised QR code to link them to a simple gateway to future communication with healthcare staff, with no need to download an app, and a simple, password-free yet highly-secure sign on process, incorporating two-factor authentication.
The user-friendly platform enables secure messaging, sharing of documents and images as well as video-calling and interfaces with Microsoft Teams to ensure ‘frictionless’ communication and hopefully avoid more than 1000 emergency department re-admissions each year.
“Through the integration of FOXO’s comprehensive communication platform, our health service stands at the forefront of modern healthcare delivery and accessibility. Our focus on improved patient access and reducing Emergency Department visits underscores our commitment to elevating healthcare outcomes, ” says Mr Kumar.
“Gold Coast Health has also built up a reputation for innovation. People have seen how we have transformed and how the industry speaks about us. If you are a beacon for innovation, and transforming for purpose, it becomes easier to attract talent from across private and public sectors.”
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