Data4Life and Monash Health have partnered to optimize clinical trial design and execution, complemented by educational workshops and professional training programs, with a shared commitment to improving patient outcomes.

Monash Health, the largest public health service in Victoria, Australia, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Data4Life, an international nonprofit digital health organization funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation. The announcement was made by Associate Professor Tam C. Nguyen, Director of Research & Innovation, Monash Health and Tim Walz, Chief of Staff, Data4Life, at the Launch of the Monash Health Global Relations Office, with Monash Health Chief Executive Prof. Eugine Yafele and Global Victoria CEO, Danni Jarrett in attendance.

The Global Relations Office is a new site launched at Monash Health to strengthen international health partnerships, building alliances with leading international hospitals, universities, and health organisations for research, training, and knowledge exchange.

Under the MoU, Monash Health will support the alliance's clinical trials through optimized trial timelines and patient enrolment, helping to achieve fast and effective subject recruitment. Data4Life will streamline clinical trial processes, collaborate on patient recruitment activities, and support the secondary use and standardisation of health data through open science and common data models, alongside professional training in Good Clinical Practice (GCP), study conduct, and other areas of clinical research.

Monash Health provides care for 1.2 million residents through 250 integrated services delivered across more than 40 locations and communities in southeast Melbourne, including statewide tertiary support for complex women's, neonatal, and paediatric care. Its research portfolio comprises 1,600 active studies, including 600 FIH and phase 2 trials and observational studies. Monash Health also operates two paediatric and two adult clinical trial centres, supported by two ethics committees/IRBs covering both paediatric and adult studies.

''Monash Health is an institution that brings exceptional clinical depth. With over 175 years of experience and decades of longitudinal records, it is a world-leading partner for such a collaboration. Data4Life is committed to providing Monash Health's teams with the tools and expertise required to perform federated studies, cross-border comparisons, and reproducible real-world evidence as efficiently as possible.''- Dr. Ben M.W. Illigens, CEO, Data4Life

The collaboration brings together Monash Health's clinical research expertise with Data4Life's scientific and technical expertise and open-source software platforms, D4L Collect and Data2Evidence, built on HL7® FHIR® and the OMOP Common Data Model, respectively.

D4L Collect is a platform for collecting prospective, multimodal health data in clinical and epidemiological studies through a secure researcher workspace and participant mobile app. It supports patient-reported outcomes (PROs), questionnaires, wearable and sensor data, and other health data in HL7® FHIR® format. D4L Collect workflows are designed to support decentralized data collection, conforming with GCP and ICH E6(R3) requirements.

Data2Evidence is an integrated Real-World Data (RWD) platform, designed for standardization and analysis of healthcare data, and reproducible Real-World Evidence (RWE) generation. It combines ETL mapping, quality assessment, cohort definition, OHDSI analytics, secure governance, and supporting federated studies in one platform, reducing manual processes and time to evidence.

Beyond clinical trials, both organizations will expand their collaboration through knowledge exchange, workshops, training programmes, and other joint initiatives. Tim Walz has been invited to Monash Health's Research and Innovation Week 2026 (7–11 September), where he will discuss the collaboration's progress to date and the strategy ahead.