The National Health Workforce Research and Planning Collaboration has been set up to last three years.

Under the contract, COAG, through the Victorian Department Health Services, will provide funding of at least 1 million dollars a year for core projects (but our expectation is that the volume of work will be significantly more than the minimum).

The partnership between AHWI and PricewaterhouseCoopers is matching the million a year in cash and in kind. The Universities of Melbourne, Queensland and Adelaide have committed cash to this venture.

The Collaborative Steering Committee has representatives from AHMAC, AHWI, and PwC will determine the research strategy.

• A Partner Executive comprising Professor Peter Brooks, CEO of AHWI, Dr Anne-Marie Feyer, lead on this initiative for PwC and Professor Tony Scott, AHWI’s Director of Research from the Melbourne Institute, the University of Melbourne, will be responsible for operationalising the strategy.

• A Research Committee is being established to oversee research. An Innovation Think Tank is also to be established, and will be run by AHWI for the Collaboration. It will bring together jurisdictions, private sector, health professional and other organisations to assist to translate research into practice, organise input from industry and stakeholders into research, and to gather information on research needs.

• The first year’s work program is already underway, and it has 9 core and 2 supplementary projects. In the first year most of the work is workforce data modelling and analysis, with the majority of the work going to PwC; a flow on from work commenced before the Collaboration was established.

It is expected that the second year work program will have a greater focus on research on new models of care, innovation in education, and health workforce competencies.

Read more about the collaboration here