How we can deliver a better outcome
Establish a West Coast Hub for Trauma and Injury Research
WA has been fortunate to have had many leaders in various fields of Injury research and advocacy, both here and at national levels. Some of the areas are listed:
-Injury prevention,
-Advocacy for risk factors such as alcohol and drugs
-Science and psychology of learner drivers
-Interpersonal violence
-Health economics of injury
-Recovery and Response to trauma
-Mass Casualty and Natural Disaster recovery
-Emergency Medical Assistance Teams
However while there are pockets of such excellence (associated with academia, or NGOs), we have a vision for a central hub of knowledge sharing and research support. Fortunately others have led the way in establishing research centres (primarily for cancer and genomics) already in Perth- thanks to incredible generosity be philanthropists.
Advocacy, lobbying and public educaton
We feel that it is more effective to have a single, unified voice that can lobby for changes in legislation, regulations is more effective at conveying the important findings from Data analysis and other research. A unified group, working together, can be the voice that changes public opinion, and drive government and industry to listen to what the data is saying to us about the never ending road trauma in particular, and other social drivers for the high rate of injury in certain vulnerable groups.
Collate and Connect Existing Injury Databases.
Create new databases where needed
Data: In research and scientific pursuit, data is the solid foundation and bedrock that serves to inform us of the causes of primary injury. Data analytics also reveal hidden and unexplored opportunities to improve outcomes in the short term and long term for trauma victims.
Western Australia is in a uniquely fortunate position to have hospitals (but not all hospitals) and clinical data connected for every patient in public hospitals using unique individual identifiers. However this still leaves databases from ambulance services, main road and police crash data, Worksafe and other agencies that need to be manually integrated for analysis by researchers.