Research Development Restricted access and poor data governance impedes research Australia generates high-quality health data collections and has the technical capacity to analyse this data. In addition, a comprehensive legal and ethical framework addresses privacy concerns. Despite this, health data is currently underutilized to improve the Australian healthcare system and patient outcomes. This is primarily because there have not been data governance systems and data formats well suited to research, thus limiting usability, access and sharing of data. These impediments were recognised by VCCC alliance partners as significant barriers to undertaking patient outcomes-focussed research. Co-created, flexibly designed platform; taking advantage of existing systems and processes The VCCC platform provides a solution to the identified barriers to use of health data for research and is underpinned by mutually-beneficial partnerships to leverage existing systems and processes. BioGrid Australia represents more than 75 Australian hospitals and research organisations and operates a federated data sharing platform for translational health and medical research. Its secure infrastructure links privacy-protected and ethically-approved health data across organisations. BioGrid has an overarching agreement with its members (including all VCCC alliance partners): members can access authorised data but each member retains custodianship of its own data. The VCCC built on a collaboration between BioGrid and the University of Melbourne’s GHRANITE team. GHRANITE software, developed by Associate Professor Dougie Boyle, allows the large-scale data acquisition and encryption of identifiers required for ethical access to clinical data from primary care. The VCCC Cancer Health Data Platform has been designed to bring together hospital data through BioGrid and primary care data through GRHANITE to build a flexible research platform that can grow to accommodate future needs. The platform also aligns with international best practice adapted to the Australian health system and data environment. Linking the missing data puzzle pieces to make a complete picture The next step is for gold standard cancer diagnosis and cancer death data from the Victorian Cancer Registry to be incorporated into the platform. Through this Victorian Cancer Registry collaboration, it will be easier to identify data about cancer patients within the VCCC Cancer Health Data Platform, particularly the care they receive from general practitioners both before and after cancer treatment. Acknowledgement Work to incorporate primary care clinical data into the platform using GRHANITE technology was funded by a grant from the BUPA Health Foundation. 49