About Us
Featured content
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Governance and Ethics
Data for Decisions is underpinned by strong ethical principles, transparency and world class data governance and security.
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Security and Privacy
Discover the University of Melbourne software and secure data storage systems designed to keep information safe and on-shore.
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Meet Us
Meet the team who administers and looks after Patron information and data from participating research clinics across Australia.
Patron Facts & Stats
1,988,752
Active Patients
4,651,933
Total Patient Records*
154
General Practice Clinics
About Data for Decisions
The ‘secondary’ use of de-identified medical records is widely recognised to have the potential to improve public health. Individual patient records are important to doctors and individuals, but when de-identified (to maintain anonymity and patient privacy) and combined with many thousands of other records, a powerful research tool is created with the potential to generate new knowledge to improve health care.
Data for Decisions, incorporating the Patron Program of Research, is a University of Melbourne research initiative undertaken through the University’s Department of General Practice and Primary Care. With the permission of general practices or other primary care providers, we collate data from de-identified medical records and use the information for research to increase knowledge, quality improvement and improve healthcare practices. The data is stored in a University of Melbourne managed primary-care data repository called Patron. An independent Data Governance Committee made up of members of the public, GPs, practice managers, researchers and a lawyer, makes a determination on behalf of the data providers on which researchers/research projects can access the data.
In some instances, the primary care providers agree to provide their de-identified data to be used only for a specific research project instead of being made available to a range of projects.
The first practices consented to contribute to Data for Decisions in late 2017, but the program had been under development since 2016, building on strong foundations of international good practice in data governance and management.
Want to know more? Click below to access our library of informational videos.
Patron Repository Governance Statement
The Patron research repository remains under the governance and oversight of The University of Melbourne. All data within the repository is managed according to The University of Melbourne policies and procedures to ensure security and compliance.
In some cases, approved research projects may involve the use of secure external environments for data analysis. These environments must meet stringent security and governance standards and are subject to The University of Melbourne review and ongoing monitoring. Regardless of location, all projects are required to adhere to Patron’s data governance framework, including reporting obligations and data destruction requirements at project completion.