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Health system capacity

Turning intelligence into capacity.

The Health Systems Sandpit is a live operating environment to diagnose capacity issues, prototype and test new ways to deploy existing resources, and generate evidence to scale what works.

Already reconfiguring community mental health

Healthcare team in collaboration (placeholder — to be replaced with Oliver testimonial video)

The system has what it needs — it just can't use it.

Across knowledge, technology and workforce, the issue is not absolute shortage. It is that the system cannot reliably convert what it has into capacity where care is delivered.

Knowledge
25 days · 20 years

Medical knowledge now doubles roughly every 25 days, yet it can still take nearly 20 years to reliably reach routine practice.

Technology
80% don't scale

More than four in five digital health innovations never move beyond proof of concept into sustained, system-wide use.

Workforce
>50% admin time

In many services, clinicians spend over half their time gathering and entering information, rather than in direct care.

We have no shortage of intelligence, human or artificial.
The shortage is orchestration.

A capacity problem goes in, a working configuration comes out.

01
Problem

A capacity problem.

Start with the challenge type that needs solving — not the technology.

The Sandpit begins with a live bottleneck, pressure point or policy problem.

  • Capacity is lost before the decision point.
  • Work is sitting in the wrong place across people, workflow and infrastructure.
  • The need is for a new configuration.
02
Configure

Four configurable assets.

The Sandpit assembles a fit-for-problem response.

Drawing from four resource types calibrated to the problem at hand:

  • Methods — diagnostic frameworks for mapping how work and intelligence are distributed.
  • Platform — software for prototyping configurations on existing digital systems.
  • Live environments — real services and systems where prototypes deploy and test.
  • Verticals — thirteen configurations at various stages of maturity.
03
Outcome

A configuration ready to scale.

Who does what, where, what is automated, what is reimbursed.

Noticing
Recognising
Carrying risk
Making the call

Distributed across four personas: System · Clinician · Consumer · Community.

Four ways governments, services and partners can engage.

Each engagement uses the same Sandpit components, calibrated to where you need to act. Begin with one — or run them sequentially as a full configuration cycle.

01

Diagnose

Map where capacity is lost in current pathways. Identify which operations are misconfigured and what should change.

For: services and policy teams scoping reform.
02

Configure

Design alternative resource configurations — who does what, where, what gets automated, how risk is held.

For: partners ready to redesign delivery.
03

Test

Run new configurations in governed live environments with real workforce, data and patients.

For: innovators and procurement teams pre-commitment.
04

Scale up

Generate decision-ready evidence — operational, clinical, economic — for procurement, policy or system rollout.

For: ministers, boards and commissioners deciding what holds.

Operates as a governed ecosystem.

With access to national and state digital systems and cross-sector partnerships spanning hospitals, primary care, pharmacies, community services, NGOs, consumer communities and professional bodies.

Anchored by

Hosted by Australia's leading health-system design lab. Funded as Australian medical research infrastructure.

Have a capacity challenge to bring?

We work with policy teams, procurement leads, investors, and service organisations. Bring a problem, a workforce question, or a piece of policy intent we can design a configuration around.

Bring a challenge →