Co-Creating solutions for some of the challenges facing the care economy today
The Health and Care Network (HCEN), based at Griffith Business School, is a collaborative initiative focused on shaping the future of health, aged and social care through high-quality research and innovation.
HCEN brings together academics, health professionals, and community partners to address critical system challenges, including workforce sustainability, service design, financial pressures, digital transformation and changing consumer expectations.
HCEN supports a broad spectrum of research, from conceptual to applied, ensuring relevance, rigor and impact.
Explore your study options
Current Health and Care Projects
Hospital and Health Facility Patient Flow
Enabling research and project work focus on patient flow in healthcare, examining how system design, organisational culture and operational practices influence access, safety and efficiency across care pathways.
Development work on translating systems-thinking and implementation approaches into practical improvements for high-demand settings, particularly outpatient and hospital services. This includes identifying bottlenecks, improving coordination across multidisciplinary teams and supporting sustainable flow solutions that enhance patient experience, workforce wellbeing and service performance.
Health Care System Productivity
Opportunities to focus on productivity in healthcare in order to maximise health outcomes from available resources while maintaining quality, safety and workforce sustainability.
Opportunities to examine how system design, workforce models and care processes influence productivity across hospitals, aged care and social care settings. This includes reducing unwarranted variation, improving care coordination and enabling clinicians to work at the top of their scope. Emphasis is placed on sustainable productivity gains that enhance patient outcomes rather than cost reduction alone.
Innovation and Cultural Acceptance in Health
Research and project interest focuses on healthcare innovation, particularly the cultural and leadership changes required to improve acceptance, adoption and translation of innovation into routine practice.
In high-pressure health systems, innovation is often constrained by accountability demands and service delivery pressures. It is increasingly important to know how organisational culture, leadership capability and middle-management roles can enable innovation uptake. This work aligns with initiatives such as Leading Health Services Innovation, which support clinicians and health administrators to plan, coordinate and improve healthcare services through practical, system-ready innovation.
Solution focused
By integrating diverse expertise and lived experience, the network bridges academia and practice to translate evidence into action.
Its work is explicitly solutions-focused, delivering evidence-informed insights that strengthen care delivery, enhance workforce resilience and support the development of sustainable, people-centred health and care systems.
Community conscious and inclusive
Intentionally inclusive and participatory, our Network engages researchers, clinicians, policymakers, consumers and community groups to co-design practical solutions for the larger community needs.
Our members
