Good data management at the heart of sector success

Around 4.5 million Australians live with cardiovascular disease.

To date, coronary heart disease continues to be the leading single cause of death in Australia – accounting for more than 17,500 deaths annually.

Our mission at the National Heart Foundation of Australia is to create an Australia free of heart disease.

To achieve this mission, we manage programs and initiatives designed to promote disease prevention and detection, fund lifesaving research and provide support for the millions of Australians at risk of developing or living with heart disease.

For more than 60 years, the Heart Foundation has played a pivotal role in promoting heart health locally and nationally. This heritage has helped us capture years of valuable data that we continue to use today.

To enhance our data’s potential and maintain our impact on the community, integrating our data effectively has become essential.

Collaboration with Domo

To enable this, we partnered with data experience platform Domo to bolster our data capacity.

Underpinned by artificial intelligence and robust data science that connects with existing cloud and legacy systems, Domo’s user-friendly dashboards and apps help organisations more effectively organise and analyse their critical data.

This collaboration improved the visibility and management of our data, ensuring our people can make well-informed decisions.

Our internal data and insights team worked with Domo’s experienced team of data specialists, led by regional vice president Peter Steggall, to consolidate and integrate our data into a centralised platform.

Peter’s support for this initiative was driven by his passion for the Heart Foundation’s work and a genuine drive to make a difference.

Impact on our teams

At the Heart Foundation we use our rich data to optimise fundraising for critical research, manage volunteers, and advocate for increased government resources.

By embracing Domo, our teams can now access verified data sets easily and independently, no longer relying solely on the specialist data and insights team for assistance with standard reporting.

The Domo platform offers controlled access to data for authorised personnel, empowering our teams to self-serve using dashboards and automated reporting, making our people more efficient, proactive and independent with how they analyse data to further our mission.

Maintaining confidentiality and the integrity of the data that we hold and adhering to strict privacy and security standards is critical. Domo enables this commitment within its platform, allowing the Heart Foundation to uphold its responsibility to protect private and sensitive information.

Volunteer management

Our core teams are backed by more than 2,000 volunteers nationally who are dedicated to working on programs and initiatives such as organising local walking groups and fundraising projects and reviewing grant applications.

We also benefit from better volunteer data management through Domo’s platform, which consolidates information to provide greater visibility over our entire volunteer pool, allowing us to assess their collective impact.

Using Domo, we can also quickly filter volunteers by location and skills to identify the most appropriate people to help with activities, programs and initiatives such as marketing and promotional campaigns or local walking events, all while maintaining data security and privacy.

Improved decision making

The Heart Foundation prides itself on being evidence-based and data-informed.

Thanks to our partnership with Domo, our data is now connected, visual and accessible. This empowers our people to use data confidently, explore and use the data available to them in ways that support their roles and our overall mission, and make informed decisions backed by the expertise of our data and insights team.

We’re proud to say our collaboration with Domo has streamlined processes, empowered our people, and improved decision making immensely.

Final thoughts

At the Heart Foundation, we are dedicated to data protection and continuously improving how we collect, analyse and draw insights from our data to inform our operational and strategic decisions.

Thanks to the expertise of our data and insights team and our valued partners, we are no longer constrained by legacy systems and can consolidate data into a unified data platform that provides authorised teams and individuals across the organisation with the information they need.

These improvements have driven productivity and efficiency and strengthened our impact on communities while ensuring the confidentiality and security of information.

We encourage other organisations, no matter the communities they serve, to explore responsible technology solutions that can enhance their missions.

Jessica Davies is head of data and insights at the National Heart Foundation.