Like any market, there are a range of players and market forces driving the quality, cost and appropriateness of healthcare. Each player has a stake in the health market, whether they are consumers, insurers, service providers or government agencies.

Current Scenario:

• Health market players range from healthcare service providers all the way to policy makers and funders – at both public and private and federal and state/territory levels.
• Other major players include universities and research institutes collecting data and using existing data collections for research.
• Each of these players collect substantial data for their own use. For example, government health departments use data for informing funding decisions; private health insurers use data to quantify risk and price insurance premiums; universities and research institutes assemble linked data sets for influencing healthcare policy.
• In most cases, only a small filtered subset of data travels upstream for analysis and policy making. Much of this data is also aggregated.