Sydney Local Health District implemented Qlik to address challenges around managing big data and inconsistent reporting. Qlik consolidated data from various clinical, financial, and operational systems into interactive dashboards accessible to executives, clinicians, and other staff. This has improved decision-making, reduced reporting time by 75%, and achieved annual efficiency savings through increased productivity, optimized resource use, and reduced incidents. Qlik has transformed the organization's use of data to drive clinical, quality, and financial improvements.

1. Solution overview
Customer Name: Sydney Local
Health District
Industry: Healthcare
Function: Executive, Patient Care,
Finance, Quality & Safety, Patient
Flow, Clinical Variation
Geography: Australia
Challenges:
 Managing big data and extracting
valuable insight
 Inconsistent and delayed
performance reporting
 No comprehensive view of
operational and clinical
productivity, outcomes and
efficiencies
Solution: District deployed Qlik to
deliver a streamline view of
operations across the District in more
meaningful manner developing
applications to address business-
critical information.
Benefits:
 Achieved annual efficiency and
productivity savings (i.e.
workforce, resource utilisation,
incident management)
 Bridged the gap between teams
of clinicians and administrators to
help improve quality and models
of care
 Reduced reporting time by 75%
per month compared to previous
systems
Data Source Systems Database:
 Cerner EMR
 NSW Health Information
Exchange
 NSW Enterprise Data Warehouse
 Pathology / Imaging / IIMS /
Pharmacy / Theatres / Blood
Products / Workforce / Finance
Qlik helps Sydney Local Health
District drive innovation in Data
Management for Clinical, Quality &
Financial Improvement
“Qlik has significantly enabled our daily operations across all our services and has
profoundly transformed the way we use information to drive and support our
decision-making. The ease of access, exceptional data visualisations and near
real-time data loads, coupled with the intuitive nature of the Qlik platform, means
we have now equipped our staff with the right data tool to achieve our exceptional
patient and operational outcomes.”
– Dr Teresa Anderson, Chief Executive, Sydney Local Health District
Overview
Sydney Local Health District is a leader in
healthcare, home to world renowned
hospitals Royal Prince Alfred and Concord
Repatriation General, as well as Sydney
Dental, Balmain and Canterbury Hospitals.
The District hosts world-leading
biomedical, clinical, health services and
public health research, and has many
leading clinicians, researchers, research
institutes and research centres contributing
to the translation of research into
innovative, evidence-based practice. Their
vision is to achieve excellence in
healthcare for all across Aged Chronic
Care and Rehabilitation, Cancer Services,
Cardiovascular, Critical Care, Gastro and
Liver, Medical Imaging, Neurosciences,
Bone and Joint, Plastics and Trauma
Surgery and Women’s Health,
Neonatology and Paediatrics. Sydney is
one of the best performing health districts
in NSW.
With the Health Reforms of 2011, “our
Performance Unit needed to ensure
efficient and accurate ways to monitor the
activity across our services,” said Mauricio
Olivera, Manager Health Systems Data
and Development.
“We had various methods of reporting and
analysing health data, but needed a platform
to pull it together to help engage the
clinicians and managers. Our organisation
craved more information but also needed a
central intuitive mechanism to house that
information and make it available to
everyone to make smarter, faster decisions.”
In order to turn its data into meaningful
insights, the District implemented the
QlikView user-driven platform across the
entire organisation. “It was quite
revolutionary,” said Dr Tim Sinclair, General
Manager Concord Repatriation General
Hospital. “It gave power back to the business
by allowing staff across all levels of the
organisation ability to discover things about
their work in a timely, accurate, and
importantly, governed way.”
Qlik highlighted the need to improve the
District’s data systems & processes and
visualise the data to give all users the whole
story in their data.

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“STARS (nee Qlik) has enabled our staff to see the whole story in the data and gain greater insight into the outcomes of our
decisions to further improve business processes. It is an incredibly powerful mechanism to ensure we continue to provide the
best care and services to our community.”
– Deborah Willcox, Director Operations, Sydney Local Health District
Performance Improvement
The transition to an ABF environment
throughout Australia highlighted the
importance of timely access to data to
support performance improvement and
system sustainability. Solving the ‘data rich,
information poor’ problem in healthcare was
therefore paramount.
The District deployed Qlik (locally branded as
the Sydney Local Health District Targeted
Activity and Reporting System [STARS]), as
its principle performance reporting and
system improvement tool. With a focus on
patient-centred care, STARS has enabled
Sydney to provide flexibility in data access
and insight tailored to clinician’s needs.
The user friendly, real-time active
management tool has allowed for better
financial, operational and clinical decision
making as it brings together the wealth of
health data available in a comprehensive
way.
To develop STARS, Sydney Local Health
District engaged and consulted with
stakeholders (including clinicians and
healthcare executives) across its network of
public hospital and health care services in
the central Sydney metropolitan area. By
encouraging active communication and
openness, the District developed a number
of applications using STARS to assist its
stakeholders with decision making. In doing
so, stakeholders have moved from an
assumptions-based approach to a
collaborative, evidence-based approach in
making decisions about performance
improvements and system sustainability.
Paradigm Shift
“The District has undergone a huge shift
from only using data to report ‘what
happened’ to using the analytics and insight
to determine why it happened and plan for
what is likely to happen in future,” said Dr
Anderson. “Work continues with all
facilities/services across the District to better
understand the power of data to dramatically
improve our already excellent clinical
offerings.”
The focus hasn’t purely been on the data
and systems but on our staff as well. We
accepted early on that a culture shift was
required across the organisation to ensure
staff at all levels embraced the opportunity
that this insight would bring to them. Part of
this shift was ensuring the review/analysis of
the information was not seen as a punitive
process; rather it being an opportunity to
uncover some efficiencies to reinvest the
time, funding, resources saved to treat more
patients, purchase new equipment, improve
models of care, and enhance work areas.
This messaging was key and continues to be
a key factor in the success we’ve been able
to achieve to date.
To support this shift, the District established
a strong governance framework harnessing a
collaborative and inclusive model with senior
executive and highly respected clinical
representation to drive the deployment through
all levels of the organisation. At all stages,
specific focus groups were involved in the
concept / design / development / refinement of
applications to ensure the Qlik platform
continually meets user needs, whether of
clinical or operational function which also
ensured strong user adoption and acceptance.
Improved Patient Outcomes
The accessibility and usability of the system
means that health executives and clinicians
now have direct and timely access to a wealth
of health related data. This information is now
actively interrogated to help drive financial and
operational efficiency as well as improve the
quality of care provided to the local community.
Examples include (but not limited to):
 Identifying patients that are most likely to
benefit from interventions and the most
appropriate care plan
 Integrating data across clinical systems
to help manage patients with chronic
conditions
 Using algorithms to foresee potential
readmissions and safety incidents.
Opportunities
Support, use and availability of information
provided by STARS has been overwhelmingly
successful to date, but the District recognises
that this is only the beginning of their journey
with the Qlik Platform. Sydney Local Health
District is continuously upgrading and developing
its STARS applications, with over 60 in the
pipeline, to continue to meet the needs of its
users. Further, improvements in data access,
education for end users and the incorporation of
new measures (e.g. international health
benchmarks, open data markets, research
publications, etc.) will empower the District to
better understand the levers that affect health
and societal outcomes.
This flagship project is now leading the way for
the wider deployment of Qlik across the State
of NSW. Sharing the success and extending
the benefit to the wider health community is
paramount!
Solution overview
10 x ROI within 7
months of deploying specific
application providing insight into
privately insured patient revenue
Over 500 users including, at a
minimum, one (1) clinical champion
and Nurse Unit Manager for all
specialties across each facility.
30 live applications with over 60 in
active development
Reduced reporting
time by 75% per
month compared to previous
systems