Transforming diabetes care through data: How BioGrid supported excellence in tracking clinical outcomes
How one local health network’s partnership with BioGrid Australia transformed diabetes care delivery and research outcomes in South Australia's northern suburbs.
Principal investigator
Associate Professor Anthony Zimmermann, Head of Diabetes and Endocrinology at Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN)
The Challenge: Serving Australia's Most Vulnerable Communities
In Adelaide's northern suburbs, diabetes prevalence approaches a rate of one in ten residents, presenting the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network diabetes service with challenges that many Australian healthcare teams would recognise all too well.
The service covers more than 400,000 residents in one of Australia's most socioeconomically disadvantaged regions – a demographic that experiences disproportionately high rates of diabetes complications.
"We've got about 40,000 people with diabetes in our catchment area needing treatment," explains Dr Zimmermann, Head of Diabetes and Endocrine Services at Lyell McEwin Hospital since 2013, who also serves as Clinical Associate Professor at the Adelaide University.
The resourcing challenges faced by health services in general, and diabetes services in particular, combined with an increasing prevalence of diabetes in the community, made it critical to find a better way to manage patients and their ongoing care. Dr Zimmermann was well aware that any change had to be supported by solid analysis of real-world data.
A data-driven solution emerges
The transformation began in 2015 when Dr Zimmermann secured funding for a one-year trial of BioGrid Australia's Diabetes Clinical and Research Database, which was already being used to collect clinical data for data-driven decision-making by several Australian hospitals treating adult diabetes patients.
The BioGrid Diabetes Clinical and Research Database was, as its name suggests, developed specifically to assist endocrinologists run their clinics. Along with data collection, database users receive regular reporting for their practices, including the ability for specialists to benchmark specific cohorts within a practice.
While it took nine months to navigate clinical governance and IT approval processes, leaving just three months for the actual trial, the potential was immediately apparent.
"In that short time, we realised it was something we needed to have," Dr Zimmermann recalls.
NALHN subsequently joined the Australasian Diabetes Data Network (ADDN) collaboration, making them the first South Australian public hospital to participate.
Joining the ADDN equipped the NALHN with something invaluable in healthcare improvement: the ability to benchmark their performance against national standards. Every six months, the service receives detailed benchmark reports comparing their outcomes with other participating centres across Australia.
Real World Data transforms daily practice
"This benchmarking didn't go unnoticed," notes Dr Zimmermann. The data revealed both strengths and opportunities for improvement.
Around the time NALHN trialled the BioGrid solution, they implemented a new multidisciplinary model for service delivery, inspired by visits to established centres of excellence including the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's diabetes centre. This transformation was achieved without additional funding – instead relying on data-driven insights to optimise existing resources.
The data collected by the NALHN Diabetes service team in the BioGrid Diabetes Clinical and Research Database enabled them to review their patient data in real-time, with their database exceeding 16,000 patients. This capability has helped the service improve their ability to target proactive care, reducing the need for reactive care delivery and improving the service’s ability to cope with large caseloads.
Recognition for service quality improvements
The impact on service quality has been measurable and sustained. The centre became, in March 2022, the first Australian service to be named a ‘Diabetes Technology Accredited Service’ by the National Association of Diabetes Centres (NADC) – a milestone that Dr Zimmermann credits significantly to their data collection and analysis capabilities through BioGrid.
The Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN) is also the only service in Australia to achieve the ‘Trifecta of Accreditation Award’, for being NADC accredited across all three key areas:
- Diabetes Centre Standard Accreditation.
- NADC Collaborative Interdisciplinary Diabetes High Risk Foot Service (HRFS) Accreditation.
- Diabetes Technology Accreditation.1
Research excellence through collaborative data
Beyond service improvement, BioGrid Australia's Diabetes database and linkage platform has supported the NALHN Diabetes team in contributing to diabetes research. Since 2016, the service has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers, with additional publications in the pipeline.
Recent research presentations have reached international audiences, including work presented at the American Diabetes Association annual scientific meeting in Orlando (June 2024) and at EASD in Madrid (September 2024), alongside presentations at the Australian Diabetes Congress. Collaborative data sharing and research with other international diabetes registries was published in Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2025 Jan;13(1):47-56 and has been a topic of conversation at international paediatric diabetes conferences since.
These research outputs demonstrate how clinical data, when properly collected and analysed through platforms like BioGrid, can generate insights that benefit the broader medical community.
The broader impact: a model for Australian healthcare
By providing robust data collection and analytics tools, BioGrid has supported the NAHLN Diabetes team in:
- Improving clinical outcomes for one of Australia's most vulnerable populations
- Transforming service delivery models based on evidence rather than assumptions
- Contributing meaningfully to national and international diabetes research
- Achieving formal recognition for excellence in care delivery
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This article is based on Dr Anthony Zimmermann's presentation at BioGrid Australia's 20th Anniversary Celebration. Dr Zimmerman is Head of Diabetes and Endocrine Services at Northern Adelaide Local Health Network and Clinical Associate Professor at the Adelaide University.