About Health Data Australia

Health Data Australia is a data discovery and request platform developed by the Australian Research Data Commons in partnership with the health research sector. The platform is designed to help researchers to find, access, and reuse health data from Australian research organisations, government agencies, and cultural institutions. Health researchers can create a MyHDA account that allows them to save their searches, bookmark datasets of interest, and submit and track data requests (Note: the data request feature is not available for all datasets as some datasets may be under embargo').

The data itself is not stored on Health Data Australia. Instead, the platform enables data providers or custodians to publish descriptions of the data (‘metadata’) that can be shared on Health Data Australia to improve its discoverability. The metadata provided on Health Data Australia helps researchers discover various datasets that may be of value to their research.

In addition to metadata, data providers can provide links to other information including research contributors, funding, publications, and other research/data documentation such as study protocols and data dictionaries.

Requests to access data are sent to the Data Provider who is responsible for assessing the request and deciding whether data can be shared. If the request is approved, they will make arrangements for access to be granted in accordance with their specific governance and data management requirements.

For more information, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions document