Optimisation Of Salmonella Genotyping And Epidemiological Data Analysis For Detection And Investigation Of Outbreaks
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$508,051.00
Summary
Bacteria known as salmonella are the most important causes of food-borne diarrhoeal disease. They occasionally cause potentially fatal septicaemia, especially in young children and people with underlying disease. We estimate that more than 80,000 cases of salmonella infection occur in Australia, each year, at a cost to the community of $37 million. Salmonella are divided into more than 2000 different types, but one - called Typhimurium - causes about 40% of infections and a few others cause most ....Bacteria known as salmonella are the most important causes of food-borne diarrhoeal disease. They occasionally cause potentially fatal septicaemia, especially in young children and people with underlying disease. We estimate that more than 80,000 cases of salmonella infection occur in Australia, each year, at a cost to the community of $37 million. Salmonella are divided into more than 2000 different types, but one - called Typhimurium - causes about 40% of infections and a few others cause most of the rest. This means that is difficult to distinguish cases of salmonella infection that have originated from one source (an outbreak) from cases that have originated from another. Without this information, is it hard to track the source, which is usually inadequately cooked meat or chicken another food that has been contaminated with salmonella after preparation. There are several existing methods for fingerprinting salmonella, but they are quite slow or do not distinguish different strains well enough to identify outbreaks quickly. This means that sources of contaminated food are often not identified in time to prevent more cases occurring. We aim to develop a faster and more discriminatory system for fingerprinting salmonella, based on novel technology that can identify many small genetic sequences that occur in different combinations in different strains. As well, we will develop electronic scanning tools that will link the fingerprints of the salmonella strains with information about the people infected with them, such as the types of food and places where they have eaten, to identify patterns or clusters that indicate a common source. The more rapidly this can be done the sooner the source of contaminated food can be found and eliminated and additional cases can be prevented. This has important implications for public health - it will increase food safety and reduce illness and economic loss.Read moreRead less
Monitoring The Gap Between Evidence And Vaccination Behaviour By Sampling The Location-specific Consumption Of Health Information From News And Social Media
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$476,648.00
Summary
Vaccination programs have saved millions of lives in the last decade but vaccine refusal threatens their success. We propose new methods for tracking social media to measure how people in different locations are exposed to different information about vaccines from the media and other sources. This will help us understand why some communities appear to be more susceptible to vaccine hesitancy, and help public health organisations more effectively address the problem of vaccine acceptance.
Organisational Motivation as a Predictor of Benefits from the Adoption of Information Technology. IOS are becoming increasingly important for organisations to remain competitive in a global marketplace. By using organisational motivations to better understand how to design and structure the processes for IOS implementation and set more realistic expectation, Australian organisations will be able to develop more effective, evidence-based methods for IOS implementation. The theory being tested is ....Organisational Motivation as a Predictor of Benefits from the Adoption of Information Technology. IOS are becoming increasingly important for organisations to remain competitive in a global marketplace. By using organisational motivations to better understand how to design and structure the processes for IOS implementation and set more realistic expectation, Australian organisations will be able to develop more effective, evidence-based methods for IOS implementation. The theory being tested is an original contribution in a growing area of information technology research. The data and rigorously tested research protocols developed will enhance Australia'a research standing, contribute to university teaching and researcher training, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Australian information technology industry. Read moreRead less
Information Systems Enabled Corporate Transformation: Evaluation of Electronic Customer Relationship Management in the Service Sector. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business and marketing strategy that integrates technology, process and business activities around the customer. Only 30% of electronic CRM efforts have been successfully implemented because stakeholder expectations are typically neglected. This issue underlines the importance of the ?soft? organisational issues involve ....Information Systems Enabled Corporate Transformation: Evaluation of Electronic Customer Relationship Management in the Service Sector. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business and marketing strategy that integrates technology, process and business activities around the customer. Only 30% of electronic CRM efforts have been successfully implemented because stakeholder expectations are typically neglected. This issue underlines the importance of the ?soft? organisational issues involved with the evaluation of information systems. By evaluating the change management process and modelling the impact of e-CRM enabled change, management strategies will be developed to enable its successful implementation. The research will provide a greater understanding for evaluating the performance of e-CRM solutions, as well as uncover opportunities for organisational related change.Read moreRead less
Preventing railway suicide: An open-systems perspective. Preventing railway suicide: An open-systems perspective. This project aims to develop an automated suicide risk detection system to reduce the incidence and impact of railway suicide, which has a devastating effect on victims’ families, station staff, train drivers, emergency workers, and bystanders. This project will use open-systems theory to develop two complementary information systems for more effective detection and reporting of suic ....Preventing railway suicide: An open-systems perspective. Preventing railway suicide: An open-systems perspective. This project aims to develop an automated suicide risk detection system to reduce the incidence and impact of railway suicide, which has a devastating effect on victims’ families, station staff, train drivers, emergency workers, and bystanders. This project will use open-systems theory to develop two complementary information systems for more effective detection and reporting of suicide risk; use these systems to investigate how different situational factors interact with different combinations of service interventions to influence suicide risk; and share the findings to reduce railway suicide in Australia and overseas.Read moreRead less
UNLOCKING BENEFITS FROM ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS IN THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC SECTOR: Benefits Realisation in the Context of the Virtual Organisation. This study proposes to provide an innovative Virtual Organisation perspective to identify factors that can assist Australian government agencies to maximise the potential benefits from Enterprise System (ES) implementation. Study aims include: Identify and explicate major characteristics of the Virtual Organisation created through collaboration between gove ....UNLOCKING BENEFITS FROM ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS IN THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC SECTOR: Benefits Realisation in the Context of the Virtual Organisation. This study proposes to provide an innovative Virtual Organisation perspective to identify factors that can assist Australian government agencies to maximise the potential benefits from Enterprise System (ES) implementation. Study aims include: Identify and explicate major characteristics of the Virtual Organisation created through collaboration between government agency and (external) ES Implementation Partner; Identify and document features and constraints peculiar to ES implementation in the Australian public sector; Identify and explicate factors impacting on benefits realisation, relating these to theory from related fields; Highlight consensus and difference among stakeholders; Develop a validated, repeatable methodology for major impact studies; Inform ES research directions.Read moreRead less
Privacy-Preserving Remote Access to Health Information Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing Environments. The project's benefits can be summarised as follows. (a) The project will provide new solutions that enable remote access to health-care data in a secure and privacy-preserving manner. (b) This will improve health care services in northern metropolitan Melbourne, and provide shorter medical response time, which is particularly important in emergency scenarios. (c) It will exemplify advance ....Privacy-Preserving Remote Access to Health Information Infrastructure in Ubiquitous Computing Environments. The project's benefits can be summarised as follows. (a) The project will provide new solutions that enable remote access to health-care data in a secure and privacy-preserving manner. (b) This will improve health care services in northern metropolitan Melbourne, and provide shorter medical response time, which is particularly important in emergency scenarios. (c) It will exemplify advanced IT support for health care, which can be utilised by other providers. (d) The project will make a direct link between IT research and its industrial application. (e) The project will also give the opportunity to a postdoctoral researcher and PhD students to perform leading edge research on privacy protection of information in an industrial environment.Read moreRead less
Reconceptualising the information system as a service. Through parallel efforts in Australia and China, the study aims to propel 'IS-Impact', the Australia-originated and most extensively validated IS success measurement model, to become the Information Systems evaluation approach of choice globally, in both research and practice.
A Model for IT Security Outsourcing of Critical Services. IT security outsourcing is the establishment of a contractual relationship with an outside vendor to assume responsibility for one or more security functions. The decision-making process associated with outsourcing security is complex. To improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process a conceptual model that integrates security benefits, costs and their respective performance measures will be developed. This model will support m ....A Model for IT Security Outsourcing of Critical Services. IT security outsourcing is the establishment of a contractual relationship with an outside vendor to assume responsibility for one or more security functions. The decision-making process associated with outsourcing security is complex. To improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process a conceptual model that integrates security benefits, costs and their respective performance measures will be developed. This model will support management in their aim of overseeing IT security effectively. The research will make a valuable contribution towards determining the impact of IT security outsourcing within Australia.Read moreRead less
Spatially Targeted Intervention For Eliminating Tuberculosis In High-burden Countries
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$645,205.00
Summary
The overall goal of my research program is to design and implement an innovative approach for eliminating TB in high-burden countries such as Ethiopia and China. My project will integrate contemporary and sophisticated analytical methods (geospatial methods, network meta-analysis and economic analysis) within a single translational research framework and provide evidence to make a substantial shift from the current paradigm of passive case detection.