These pressures arise from a combination of systemic, social, and informational factors, including:
As a trusted voice at the intersection of the delivery of healthcare, science, medicine and society, the Academy works to:
Trust is foundational to the success and credibility of health and medical research and systems, influencing the uptake of evidence-based advice and participation in research.
The Academy’s work on trust spans understanding trust, research integrity and impact, and data and artificial intelligence.
Every major advance in modern medicine rests on acts of public trust, which in many cases, is the decision to donate human tissue for research. The Academy has submitted two responses to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Review of Human Tissue Laws and the associated discussion paper, focusing on the use of human tissue for research purposes.
The Academy’s policy explainer on trust in the health and medical sciences explores trust as a dynamic, multidimensional foundation for effective research, evidence-based care and public engagement. Trust enables participation in research, uptake of health advice, and resilience to misinformation, while declining trust undermines system performance and community confidence. This policy explainer identifies transparency, good communication, equity and institutional integrity as key drivers of trust, and highlights the need to strengthen these to support a robust, responsive health system.
High-quality, reliable research is the foundation for a trustworthy health and medical sciences ecosystem and a trusted health system. At a time when 61% of people in Australia say that they worry about health and medical science becoming politicised, the Academy is committed to promoting the rigorous standards, transparency and oversight needed to ensure that research credibility, ethical conduct and public confidence remain strong.
Technologies such as precision medicine and AI have transformative potential to streamline care delivery and improve health outcomes. By promoting responsible data stewardship, robust governance and ethical deployment, the Academy supports ethical integration of AI and health data into research and clinical practice in ways that enhance decision-making, protect privacy and deliver meaningful benefits for patients, clinicians, and the health system.
The Academy published a roundtable report ‘Artificial Intelligence in Health: Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges’ on 4 June 2020, which called for a national conversation on the future role of artificial intelligence in health in Australia. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already starting to transform healthcare and the Academy concluded that Australia must act now to set our own path through this new landscape.