Mental Health Node
The Mental Health Node (MHN) is an integral part of the HeSANDA initiative, funded by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). Contact usAbout
Our primary objective
Our primary objective is to compile and disseminate comprehensive metadata related to clinical trials within the mental health field. This information is accessible through the Health Data Australia (HDA) website, serving as a centralized platform that facilitates the discoverability, searchability, and requestability of clinical trial data for researchers and stakeholders in the mental health community.
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Key Information to Include:
Role within HeSANDA
MHN serves as a dedicated node within the HeSANDA initiative, focusing on mental health research. We are responsible for the systematic collection of metadata associated with clinical trials in the field.
Collaboration with RDA
MHN is integral to the Research Data Australia (RDA) platform. We work in collaboration with RDA to ensure that the metadata we collect is made accessible on the RDA website. RDA serves as a centralized hub, aggregating clinical trials metadata from all nodes across Australia. This collaboration ensures that this valuable information is findable, searchable, and requestable by researchers and stakeholders interested in mental health research.
Data Accessibility
Through the MHN website, users can access comprehensive information about registered clinical trials, including detailed descriptions, funding sources, and access links. Importantly, all data is accessible in compliance with rigorous privacy and security protocols, as deidentified Individual Patient Data (IPD).
SHeBa Collaboration
MHN collaborates closely with the Secure Health data and Biosamples (SHeBa) platform, developed in partnership between Deakin University and Barwon Health. This partnership ensures that deidentified IPD, sourced from the metadata found on the MHN website, can be accessed by researchers securely and responsibly.
Governance and Approval
To access the deidentified IPD, the Data Custodian of the searchable metadata must approve a request. Once approved, the data is securely transferred to a controlled virtual environment where secondary researchers (requesters) can analyse the data. Importantly, researchers can only export non-identifying summary reports, maintaining the highest standards of data privacy.
Federated Data Catalogue
MHN and SHeBa contribute to a federated data catalogue and distributed data network. Custodians list potentially available data and biosamples, while researchers can view and apply for access. Custodians retain governance over data access, and secure de-identification is performed prior to data export.
Data Consent and Linkage
Data availability can be filtered based on the level of consent provided by patients/participants. SHeBa enables exclusive linkage of biological samples with individual/participant data. Researchers can also become co-custodians of their work's outputs, including cleaned data and analysis results.Please contact us to request an appointment
Email us at law-clinic@deakin.edu.au, call 03 9244 3000 (Melbourne) / 03 5227 8563 (Geelong)
or send us a message by clicking the button below.