We work with accredited health writers, clinical experts and production companies to produce our health information. Here is a list of some of our regular contributors:
Script's team of medical writers come from a range of health professions, including medicine, pharmacy, nursing and occupational therapy. Script's director, Galia Stephenson, has more than 15 years of health education experience, a Bachelor of Science degree (Bsc Psych, Biochem) and a Master's degree in Neuropharmacology (MSc Pharmacol.).
WriteSource Medical (WSM) is a bespoke medical writing, data management and biostatistics consultancy that provides professional services to the academic, government and pharmaceutical sectors. WSM's medical writers have diverse backgrounds covering nursing, medicine, pharmacy, public health and regulatory writing.
Jane has 35 years of experience as a child health nurse and has qualifications in general, paediatric, immunisation and midwifery nursing. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Applied Science (Nursing).
Elsevier provides information services for the science, health, and technology sectors, including publishing medical journals and textbooks. In addition to writing and reviewing new health content for our websites, Elsevier conducts scheduled reviews of existing content for clinical currency and quality assurance purposes.
Ragg & Co's panel of writers and editors comes from a range of backgrounds, including health, science and law. The firm's director, Mark Ragg (MBBS BA), has worked as a doctor in emergency departments, and as a journalist with The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Deb has a Bachelor of Nursing degree and is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). She has worked both in hospital and in community settings as a Registered Nurse, Midwife, Childbirth Educator, Child and Family Health Nurse and Lactation Consultant.
Karyn is a freelance medical writer with more than 15 years' experience writing informative and engaging educational materials both for health professionals and patients. She holds a PhD in chemistry and a Graduate Certificate in journalism.
Broken Yellow specialises in high-quality video, animation and design for a range of productions. Healthdirect Australia commissioned a series of animations from Broken Yellow that guides consumers through the Australian healthcare system.
Motherbird is a brand identity and design studio that has been working with Healthdirect Australia for over 10 years. Motherbird has provided logo design, infographics and animations.
Healthdirect Australia also includes on its websites video content produced by Australian health peak bodies and other organisations. Video provides easy access to high-quality healthcare information, presented by subject matter experts, and is beneficial to consumers at all levels of 'health literacy'. Learn more about our information partners below.
The healthdirect service finder is powered by the National Health Services Directory (NHSD), a national directory of health services and the practitioners who provide them.
The NHSD data align with other national databases, such as AHPRA's register of practitioners, ensuring consistency of data sets across the health sector. The NHSD also uses a best practice framework and consistent language to communicate across the health system by adhering to the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard and the SNOMED CT-AU taxonomy.
The NHSD also connects with Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™), which is an initiative of the Australian Digital Health Agency to help healthcare provider organisations update their business information in one place. Once registered with PCA™, healthcare providers can choose to automatically send their updated business information to all their connected business partners, such as the NHSD.
Healthdirect Australia works with a group almost 200 leading Australian health organisations that provide trusted content which can be accessed through our range of online services. They include peak bodies, government agencies, research institutes, educational institutes and not-for-profit organisations. An information partnership reflects a shared vision to provide relevant and reliable health and related information to Australian consumers.
Information partners are assessed for the quality, relevance and technical attributes of their online resources. Each organisation and their clinical governance and content development processes are evaluated. They adhere to our publishing standards, which underpin the criteria that Healthdirect Australia uses when assessing organisations for information partnership.
Healthdirect Australia complies with relevant external standards for websites, including:
The World Wide Web Consortium's guidelines, WCAG, define how organisations can make online content more accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines also make content more usable for older individuals, whose abilities are changing with age, and often improve usability in general.
These advisory notes are issued by the Australian Human Rights Commission. They are intended to assist organisations that develop web resources by clarifying the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA).
Pregnancy, Birth and Baby's editorial oversight occurs at 2 levels:
Content on the healthdirect and Pregnancy, Birth and Baby websites needs to adhere to Healthdirect Australia's Editorial Guidelines.
These guidelines have been produced to ensure Healthdirect Australia's digital services, such as websites, tools, applications and widgets, follow best editorial practice, use consistent, correct and consumer-focused language and that all content is optimised for digital consumption and search engines.
Australians who use Healthdirect Australia's online and other services come from a wide variety of backgrounds and demographics. They also vary in their ability to access health-related information, and to understand and make decisions about their own health – their overall 'health literacy'.
Ensuring that content considers differing levels of 'health literacy' is a crucial objective.
One of the tools utilised to ensure adherence to best practice health literacy standards is the SHeLL Health Literacy Editor, developed by the Sydney Health Literacy Lab at the University of Sydney (Ayre J. et al., 2023. JMIR Formative Research, e40645. DOI: 10.2196/40645).
Healthdirect Australia aims to provide consumers with accessible, understandable information that will allow them to make informed decisions about their own health. Where possible, content should outline specific actions readers can take to maintain or improve their health as well as deal with illness and even emergencies.
Healthdirect Australia's 'Pathways Process' applies to content that is manually planned, developed, produced, published and maintained by Healthdirect Australia within the digital properties and channels we operate. Processes outline workflows that cover both the creation of new content and its ongoing maintenance.
Healthdirect Australia's content development process includes the following phases:
Healthdirect Australia manages and maintains the Australian Health Thesaurus, a taxonomy of medical, health and human services-related concepts that reflect the current Australian environment. Concepts, including medicine terms, are mapped to standard terminologies, such as SNOMED, to enhance linked data opportunities.
All content is reviewed on a regular basis to make sure it is complete, accurate and trustworthy. Our standard review frequency is every 2 years, with some topics reviewed more often due to the nature of the subject matter. 'Last reviewed' dates appear clearly on individual pages.
Healthdirect Australia's Clinical Governance and Content teams periodically audit samples of published content, and consumer feedback is considered regularly, to ensure a user-centric approach and continuous improvements.
In addition to these regular reviews of specific health content, our associated processes are audited and assessed periodically to ensure best practice content governance.
Our health information is evidence-based, with content supported by reliable sources. In addition to published articles and reviews in peer-reviewed journals, Healthdirect Australia aims to use Australian, non-commercial sources, including:
Original ('first hand') sources of the material are referenced on our web pages. All references cited can be accessed by a link from the sources section on each page.
Healthdirect Australia's websites do not receive funding from advertising the products or services of other organisations. We don't promote the interests of any person or organisation who may financially benefit as a result of information placed on the website.
Healthdirect Australia ensures the company makes information available on its websites with the primary objective of providing an important health service to users of that information.
Our editorial leadership team ensures the content on the Pregnancy, Birth and Baby website is developed in accordance with Healthdirect Australia's guidelines and governance processes. The team provides strategic direction and oversees the external contributors who write and review our content.
Rachel is Healthdirect Australia's clinical lead for the Pregnancy, Birth and Baby service. As a member of the Clinical Governance division, Rachel oversees the quality and clinical trustworthiness of the website and contact centre in line with our Clinical Governance Framework.
Andrea ensures the editorial quality of content across Healthdirect Australia's digital channels. This includes making sure it complies with health literacy principles. She also consults and advises on media and communications throughout the business, drawing on over 15 years' experience as a journalist, editor and sub-editor for national and international news outlets, and as an editorial consultant for intergovernmental organisations.
Camilla leads Healthdirect Australia's Digital Content team, which is responsible for delivering the content strategies governing the online components of our services. Key activities include content planning, commissioning, production, publishing and continuing quality assurance and optimisation.
James oversees the design, delivery and management of the taxonomies, ontologies and vocabularies that support Healthdirect Australia's online properties. He assists with information architecture development and management, including providing input to content modelling as channels are developed and evolve.
