Cockburn Integrated Health

Digitising the Cockburn Aboriginal Ear Health Program

Digitising the Cockburn Aboriginal Ear Health Program

The Cockburn Ear Health Program delivers critical ear health care for Aboriginal children. We wish to build the capacity of this service through a digitisation project. The program wishes to transition towards electronic and digital resourcing as a way to increase the efficiencies, security, and mobility of our service provision across sites, while reducing storage ...

GOAL

$14,772

Australia > WA > Metro
09/01/2024 > 01/01/2025

Target Population

  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
  • Early years (0-5)
Cockburn Integrated Health Cockburn Integrated Health

Cockburn Integrated Health (CIH) is a Not for Profit entity overseen by a Board of Management. The organisation was established in 2011 as part of the then Commonwealth GP Super Clinics Program with service start-up in October 2014. CIH is one of five (5) Super Clinics in Western Australia, with the others located in Midland, Wanneroo, Northam and Karratha. Funding for the establishment of CIH was provided by the Commonwealth Government, the City of Cockburn and Lotterywest.

Our mission is to enhance the health and wellbeing of the Cockburn area by delivering coordinated, multi-disciplinary primary health care tailored to community needs. We aim to improve the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and affordability of integrated health services in the Cockburn Region. In line with our vision and mission, in 2019 we launched an Aboriginal Ear Health Program providing audiology, speech pathology, Ear Nose Throat review and related ear-health surgeries for Aboriginal children in Perth's metropolitan area. This program provides free, timely, accessible, and culturally safe ear health services for Aboriginal children, with the goal of closing the gap in ear health care.

The Cockburn Aboriginal Ear Health Program was developed to address the high prevalence of chronic Otitis Media (middle ear disease) in Aboriginal children, which leads to lifelong complications such as hearing loss, and speech and learning impacts. Since its establishment in late 2019, over 1000 Aboriginal children have been evaluated for ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) and audiology issues, with more than 300 receiving necessary surgeries and many others receiving speech pathology services where indicated.

Project Summary

The Cockburn Ear Health Program delivers critical ear health care for Aboriginal children. We wish to build the capacity of this service through a digitisation project. The program wishes to transition towards electronic and digital resourcing as a way to increase the efficiencies, security, and mobility of our service provision across sites, while reducing storage costs, which we expect to enhance service provision overall. The digitisation process includes transitioning our paper-based medical records to 100% electronic records, upgrading our medical equipment for better health outcomes, and adding electronic therapy resources to supplement or replace physical and paper-based resources.

This digitisation project requires new laptops, new iPads, and new licenses for an electronic medical records database. Specifically we require 5 new laptops for visiting doctors and audiologists to use, to access electronic medical records securely while visiting our clinic. Further, we request a sixth laptop to connect to a newly funded piece of specialist medical equipment, a Video Otoscope, which requires a dedicated computer to connect and show live video of the middle ear in real time, for the purposes of health education. We’re requesting 6x 12-month licenses to the MMeX medical records platform. Lastly, we request the purchase of 2 iPads with rugged cases and funds to purchase applications for use on each iPad, to be used as therapy resources for our speech pathology service. These iPads with corresponding therapy applications will allow children to receive speech pathology services in the clinic and in the community without the need to duplicate or triplicate all our physical speech pathology resources.

Project Outcomes

Program digitisation allows the enhancement of the Ear Health Program in which we aim to achieve better ear health outcomes for Aboriginal children. The availability of these ear health services is crucial for early intervention, which can significantly enhance a child's ability to hear, speak, and learn effectively. Untreated ear conditions can severely affect a child's educational and social development, leading to long-term disadvantages. Our program seeks to address these risks by offering affordable, high quality and efficient ear health care that looks at immediate medical needs and supports ongoing developmental progress.

More specifically, in digitising our service we expect to increase efficiencies, increase security, and facilitate the mobility of a wider range of services both on site and externally in the community. We will know this has been successful when the service is successfully delivering ear health appointments via electronic records and resources, and without the need to use and store a large quantity of hard-copy or physical files and resources. We expect to see new and improved efficiencies in service provision and logistics of service-delivery quite quickly following successful digitisation, and longer term we expect to see a more viable and scalable service as a result. Further, we expect to see an immediate mobilisation of speech therapy services into the community as a result of access to iPads with therapeutic applications.

Budget Breakdown

TOTAL BUDGET: $1,344,772
FUNDING
Funding source Amount
Rural Health West for medical services (confirmed) $70,000
Telethon7 (unconfirmed) $400,000
Stan Perron (confirmed) $160,000
In-kind health service provision (confirmed) $600,000
In-kind office space, and other support (confirmed) $100,000
Funding Gap (unconfirmed) $14,772
EXPENSES
Expense item Amount
Laptops x 5 for visiting specialist doctors to access electronic medical records when on site at our clinic $5,000
Laptop x 1 to connect Video-Otoscope and show live video of a child’s inner-ear for health education purposes during an ear-health consult $1,000
12-month licenses for MMeX medical records software x 6 @ $600 each $3,600
iPads x 2 $3,000
iPad protective case x 2 $172
iPad applications (To deliver a wide range of therapy activities by a Speech Pathologist, using a combination of speech, language, literacy, and communication applications) $2,000
Visiting specialist fees (funded by Rural Health West) $70,000
Program Coordination and Speech Pathology Staffing $400,000
Cultural support and program management $160,000
In kind contributions $700,000

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Level 6, 126 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne VIC 3002

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

Australian Communities Foundation is a proudly inclusive organisation and an ally of LGBTQIA+ communities and the movement toward equality.