2024
My Health Record: Share By Default
While at Tobias Australia, I worked with the Australian Government's Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing (DoHDA) to map the potential impacts of the My Health Record Share by Default Bill and design tools to support its ongoing evaluation. The Share by Default Bill proposed mandating healthcare providers to share patient health information to the My Health Record system within a set timeframe. The Department needed to understand the full scope of that change - its potential benefits, disbenefits, and risks - across people, processes, systems, and policy. Our team was brought in to make sense of it, and to build tools that could support evidence-based decision-making now and into the future.
The BRIEF
How can we holistically understand, measure, and evaluate the current and ongoing impact of digital health policies on the Australian public?
The Approach
A human-centred approach to policy and data analysis, so that the experiences of Australians remain at the heart of economic and risk modelling.
We engaged consumers, healthcare providers, pathology and diagnostic imaging providers, healthcare administrators, and government stakeholders through a mix of primary and secondary research. As Experience Designer, my role spanned visual design, user research, workshop facilitation, and capability uplift - bridging different audiences and purposes across all three phases of the project.
Image source: Tobias Australia
The Solution
Collaboratively designed modelling tools and artefacts, delivered alongside a series of human-centred methodology educational workshops.
The suite of artefacts included a Consolidated Benefits and Risks Map - a visual synthesis of SBD's potential impacts across short and long-term horizons - and a Benefits Register and Economic Modelling Tool, which centralised data, assumptions, and calculations to support scenario testing, policy evaluation, and performance tracking. I led the interface design of the Modelling Tool, working closely with economists to translate complex data into something immediately usable by non-technical stakeholders. A series of capability uplift workshops and Loom training materials supported the Department's ongoing use of both tools.
Image source: Tobias Australia
The Impact
Changes being made to legislation ("Act" as of May 2025).
This project helped clarify the human and organisational factors influencing the realisation of SBD's benefits, and fed those insights into broader evaluation approaches across the Department. The tools and ways of working developed have since been applied across additional projects and teams, contributing to the Department's Impact Analysis and strengthening the evidence base for legislative change.
AWARDS
This project contributed to a 5-year project with DoHDA, which received two Good Design Awards in 2025:
Policy Design (Winner)
Design Strategy (Winner)