How can we increase cyber security awareness to reduce risk to Victorians?

The Department of Premier and Cabinet is seeking to make cybersecurity easier and more relevant to Victorian Public Sector employees to reduce risk to Victorians.

The cyber threat environment is increasing at all levels of government while cybersecurity capability is fragmented across a large public sector workforce.

This is an exciting opportunity to help a passionate team bust through bureaucratic process and make a meaningful impact on cyber security awareness.

How can we make the Victorian transport system more responsive to user safety and wellbeing?

The Department of Transport is looking for new ways to understand and enhance user safety, mobility and satisfaction with the state’s transport network.

This is an exciting opportunity to ensure that the Victorian transport system is more responsive to the diverse requirements of transport users, particularly the personal safety of women and girls.

How can emerging technology keep Victorians safe at work?

WorkSafe is interested in exploring how emerging technologies can help prevent workplace injuries, including physical and mental injuries.

With 24 lives lost at work in Victoria in 2017-2018 and many others affected by avoidable injuries, this is an opportunity for startups to help shape how WorkSafe manage health and safety in the future.

Be it to support high-risk industries like agriculture and manufacturing or to enhance the day-to-day activities of WorkSafe inspectors, startup creativity could play a crucial role in keeping Victorians healthy and safe.

How might we incorporate the health outcomes that matter to patients into clinical practice?

Patients are best placed to report how the care they receive affects the health outcomes that are meaningful to them.

Patient Reported Measures (PRM) are used to capturing outcomes that matter to patients, by the patients. This includes the patient’s perspective on how illness impacts their life, well-being and health. It also includes the patient’s experience and perception of their healthcare.

Incorporating PRMs into clinical practice is highly desirable as they:

• Enhance clinician-patient communication
• Improve the quality of care and clinical practice
• Improve patient satisfaction
• Guide safe and effective healthcare

It is challenging to routinely capture these measures for patients who access hospital services. Questionnaires are often sent in paper form to the patient’s home before their initial consultation but their completion rates are poor as patients forget or experience language difficulties. Capturing PRMs during clinical consultation is also time prohibitive.

This challenge creates an exciting opportunity for a startup to develop a digital solution that can capture and report PRMs to improve healthcare delivery.

How might we reduce hospital acquired complications?

Australia has one of the best health systems in the world but things can go wrong. One in every nine patients who go into hospital in Australia suffer a complication – about 900,000 patients each year. If they stay in overnight, the figure rises to one in four – about 725,000 patients each year.

Hospital Acquired Complications (HACs) are adverse events experienced by patients in hospitals. There are 16 HACs as defined by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. HACs cause patients harm that is potentially preventable. They affect a patient's recovery and can result in a longer length of stay in hospital. They also use precious resources that could be spent treating other patients.

This challenge creates an exciting opportunity for a startup to create a solution to help predict which patients will develop which HACs in order to proactively predict and prevent the occurrence of HACs so that hospitals can reduce harm.

How might we better understand how Victorians use public transport?

Victoria needs an integrated transport system to connect people to jobs, education, services and leisure activities. The state is growing and changing rapidly. By 2050, Melbourne will need to support an extra 10.4 million trips a day across all forms of transport. Meanwhile, regional Victoria’s population is set to double in 20 years.

Understanding how Victorians use public transport (train, tram and bus) is critical to meeting future demand. This can be used in a variety of ways such as planning new stations, safety and operational uses, customer information, and more.

Current public transport data sources are patchy with major drawbacks. There is scope to vastly improve the sourcing of:

• Date and time of trips
• Patronage numbers ie. quantity of trips
• Origin and destination or trip/journey
• Modes used to access public transport network
• Use of amenities and infrastructure at stops/stations
• Real time use

An exciting opportunity exists to improve knowledge of how people use public transport to support the future growth of Victoria.