Cisco & RMIT Launch Health Transformation Lab
Healthcare innovation to deliver game-changing health solutions

Cisco & RMIT Health Transformation Lab aims to address health system transformation through applied innovation, a collaboration across academia and industry.

The Lab operates at the intersection of the human and the technological, bringing together health and innovation leaders, human-centred design, systems thinking, technology and communication process transformation to reshape the future of health.

Investment is part of Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration program, to drive technology enabled transformation in Australia and other selected countries.

Melbourne, 5 March 2020 – Cisco and RMIT have launched the Health Transformation Lab, a place for health leaders to bring their most complex and difficult challenges and consider how technology can support health initiatives. It will bring together ideas, leaders, innovators and infrastructure to make the future of healthcare, enabled by technology, a reality.

Some of the game-changing innovations that are already being led by the Lab include a brooch that can detect loneliness, a ‘tunechair’ that can activate memory and reduce agitation in dementia patients and health drones that have the potential to improve patient rehabilitation outcomes.

RMIT Vice Chancellor and President Martin Bean CBE said the University was thrilled to be part of an exciting initiative that brings researchers, technologists and innovators together to make a difference.

“RMIT’s Health Transformation Lab is a great example of academia and industry coming together to find solutions to real social and economic challenges,” he said.

“As a global university of technology, design and enterprise, we are excited to be working with industry leaders like Cisco and passionate health professionals to deliver life-changing innovation.”

Technology bringing unique solutions to pressing healthcare issues

The Lab delivers a first-of-its-kind approach, operating at the intersection of the human and the technological, bringing together health and innovation leaders, human centred design, systems thinking, technology and communication process transformation to reshape the future of health.

Health Transformation Lab Director, Professor Vishaal Kishore, says the collaboration with Cisco provides an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the most challenging, multifaceted problems of health system transformation.

“The Health Transformation Lab is where Australian leaders come to solve their hardest problems, sometimes in the most surprising and provocative of ways,” Professor Kishore says.

“It’s a place where technology, innovation and humanity collide in a way that we haven’t seen before in Australia, producing outcomes with real impact and transformation for the Australian health system, its providers and the people it seeks to serve.”

Healthcare driven by technology innovation

Today’s patients expect their experiences to be enabled by technology. This includes remote consultations, wireless connectivity, and location-aware mobile services. Today’s clinicians require a secure, digital environment that makes it possible to be more efficient and provide better care, with access to the systems they need from any location, at any time.

A modern digital healthcare system is driven by the people of which it is composed and the information they exchange. Cisco enables the secure access, sharing and coordination of information between individuals, teams and the systems they interact with, enhancing existing and creating new more effective, models of patient centred care.

Cisco Australia & New Zealand’s Managing Director, Digital Transformation Office, Sam Gerner, says the Health Transformation Lab represents a ground-breaking opportunity to innovate across a range of healthcare challenges and build better outcomes for Australians.

“There has never been a more pressing time to leverage the digital platform investments that have been made across the healthcare system. By facilitating collaborations with academics, clinicians and technologists there is the potential to develop and test exciting new healthcare solutions enabled by increased connectivity and digital insights.”

Cisco’s investment in the breakthrough Lab forms part of the company’s commitment to invest $61 million into digital transformation projects in Australia over three years, as part of its Country Digital Acceleration program – a long-term global initiative to accelerate national digitalisation and innovation agendas and create new value for countries, its businesses and citizens.