The Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) has launched a new, multi-million dollar project looking at how virtual health technologies are best deployed in remote Indigenous communities, particularly in primary care.

The project, led by NT Health and the Menzies School of Health Research, is spruiked as being a “unique study that addresses how to deploy digital tools” to best support primary healthcare in remote Australia.

The project is supported by the Department of Health and Aged Care, which says it will use the project’s health economic analysis outputs to inform policy and strategy at a national level.

Telehealth provider Healthdirect Australia says it will use the project’s findings “to optimise culturally safe and appropriate service workflows that can be implemented, particularly in video-based consultations”.

“The project starts with no assumptions about what does and doesn’t work,” Menzies’ professor John Wakerman said.

“It starts where the service is at. Recommendations will be based on needs and preferences identified by both consumers and health professionals, with a particular focus on integrating multiple professional groups working in remote [comprehensive primary health care],” he said in a statement.