Learning Health Networks

LHNs bring together clinicians, people with lived experience, data experts, researchers, health system leaders and improvement specialists to use data and evidence to improve clinical care and patient outcomes.  Their function is to gather and analyse evidence to implement decisions and monitor the effectiveness.   

Characteristics of a LHN include:  

• a shared vision to align multiple stakeholders around a common goal  
• co-production: facilitating collaboration at scale among multiple stakeholders to co-produce information, knowledge and resources to create improvement  
• transparent data sharing: generate a rich data stream to gain insights and rapidly respond to the gap between current and desired performance   
• widespread capacity to change systems: apply a quality improvement method to rapidly test, spread and scale ideas to achieve new levels of performance  
• a culture of trust: encourage curiosity, shared learning, contribution and respect  
• governance: operate within a framework for governance and management for the design, implementation, and cycles of evaluation to improve outcomes.  

A LHN is established to achieve five things:  

1. Create a rich data stream 
2. Analyse and test insights 
3. Make decisions 
4. Rapidly implement those decisions 
5. Close the loop by checking reliability and effectiveness of that implementation. 

For more information on LHN, download SCV LHN overview.

LHN priority areas will be reviewed every three years to inform future iterations of LHNs and to ensure they align with our strategic priorities and those of the broader Victorian healthcare system. 

In addition, the Clinical Conversations webinar series provides a platform for people to explore speciality areas of healthcare by sharing and discussing key learnings from lived experience in the sector.

We're committed to supporting purposeful engagement of the healthcare workforce and those with lived experience by fostering collaboration and peer learning within the healthcare sector.  Our Learning Health Networks (LHNs) bring together clinicians, people with lived experience, academics, and improvement specialists to improve patient outcomes.  

The LHN model allows us to capitalise on learnings from safety reviews and sentinel events and to progress a Safety-II focus. In healthcare, we have well-developed Safety- I responses, which focus on what went wrong and making recommendations. Safety-II promotes prevention of an error by learning from and promoting actions that go well. LHNs provide the opportunity to benefit from Safety-I and Safety-II systems to increase the improvements being made in a particular area of focus.