Objectives: The Bright Alliance is a powerful alliance between the Prince of Wales Hospital (POW), Royal Hospital for Women and Sydney Children’s Hospital and the University of NSW (UNSW) with the dual aims of delivering personalised accountable care and accelerated scientific discovery. A translational cancer medicine environment will be established, bringing together patients, healthcare providers and researchers in a single, logical organisational framework. To achieve this involves transforming the way people work and collaborate, implementing strategic integrated information systems and solutions with effective data governance.  The aim of this study was to design new ways of working, outline the key roles, identify their information requirements and define the information systems and solutions for The Bright Alliance.

Approach: An innovative approach was undertaken to define the new ways of working; the roles; and the information systems and solutions.  A series of interviews identified key roles and their core information requirements, including the roles of patients and families, health care professionals, researchers, information managers, ethics support and executive management. Two service design workshops were conducted to define the core operational scenario’s: key stages in each journey, new ways of working and collaborating, and integration of the information systems and solutions.  

Results:  Five integrated patient centric and collaborative scenarios essential to deliver personalised care and accelerated scientific discovery were designed:  Cancer Prevention and Risk Reduction; Diagnosis, Treatment and Recovery; Research; Clinical Trials; and Palliative Care. Seventeen key roles were identified to effectively operate the new environment. Key information requirements and integrated information systems to support the new ways of working and delivering information for clinical care and research were also identified. This study, through describing the future state has provided a starting point for the transformational change journey for The Bright Alliance.