Capability 2.2.2
Medical
Definition
Health and biomedical datasets encompassing clinical records, clinical trials data, medical imaging, pharmaceutical data, service utilisation data, and population-scale genomic or epidemiological information.
Examples
- Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS)
- Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)
- Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) (Services Australia)
- National Hospital Morbidity Database (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare)
- Australian Genomics Health Alliance (AGHA) datasets (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
Indicators
- Population-level representativeness of health datasets (e.g. completeness across age, gender, region, Indigenous status)
- Standardised metadata schema
- Federated compliance and scalability (legal and institutional interoperability)
- FAIR compliance (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)
- CARE compliance (collective benefit, authority to control, responsiblilty and ethics)
- Provenance and lineage tracking
- Consent frameworks
- Onshore hosting and secure processing environments (e.g. SURE)
- Clear licensing
- Longevity and version control
- Domain specific data standards
- Machine readiness formatting
National AI Plan
PLAN COMMITMENT
Limited commitment
See general comment at 2.2.1 (Language, Arts, Culture & History). Recognises the importance of data to support healthcare AI through broad references, including public service use cases in health and review of regulation for healthcare and medical device software (Action 6, Action 7). Limited commitment by government in the plan represents a missed opportunity. More should be done to leverage this very high agency to offset capability gaps elsewhere in the ecosystem. This is one of 8 capabilities over which Australia wields very high agency; national priority should be given to maintaining this agency and leveraging it internationally to offset gaps in other capabilities of low agency.
Stocktake
Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). Australian Government Department of Health / Services Australia. Accessed October 2025. https://www.mbsonline.gov.au/internet/mbsonline/publishing.nsf/
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). Australian Government Department of Health / Services Australia. Accessed October 2025. https://www.pbs.gov.au/pbs/home
Australian Immunisation Register (AIR). Services Australia / Australian Government Department of Health. Accessed October 2025. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/australian-immunisation-register
National Hospitals data collection. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Accessed October 2025. https://www.aihw.gov.au/about-our-data/our-data-collections/national-hospitals-data-collection
National Disability Data Asset (NDDA). NDDA / Australian Government. Accessed October 2025. https://www.ndda.gov.au
Electronic Health Records for Defence Personnel. (PMKeyS, Defence eHealth) Australian Government / Department of Defence. 10 March 2015. Accessed October 2025. https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/electronic-health-records-defence-personnel
Is the Stocktake missing evidence?
Share additional information for potential future Assessments