Work · Data platforms
ORIGINS: the pipeline that became a research data platform
A 2-week POC automating Telethon Kids Institute's monthly ORIGINS reporting turned into a multi-year partnership and the foundation of the institute's Data and Analytics Platform.
- Organisation
- Telethon Kids Institute × DataDivers
- My role
- Data consultant (built the full pipeline)
- When
- 2022 – 2024
- 2 weeksto automate a 3–5 day monthly process
- +25%participation from automated notifications
- ~5 daysof FTE effort saved per month
- multi-yearpartnership from a 6-month contract
- Source APIsstudy and survey providers
- Python + cronscheduled extraction and consolidation
- PostgreSQLone reportable database
- Power BIleadership and clinical meetings
- Power Automateparticipant notifications by email
The problem
ORIGINS is one of Western Australia’s largest long-term health studies: a birth cohort that follows families from pregnancy through early childhood. Its monthly leadership report depended on data gathered by hand from several systems, which took 3–5 business days every month.
What I built
I created the whole data pipeline:
- Python jobs pulling from several providers’ APIs, scheduled with cron on a local server.
- Consolidation into one reportable PostgreSQL database.
- Power BI reports for management and doctors’ meetings.
- Power Automate emails notifying participants as each survey fell due.
The proof of concept automated the full monthly process in 2 weeks.
Outcome
- The POC won a 6-month contract, which grew into a multi-year partnership.
- Automated notifications lifted participation by 25% and saved about 5 FTE-days a month.
- With consolidated data, researchers produced many new studies, and the platform helped win further grants.
- The ORIGINS reporting, notifications and consolidation became the foundation of the institute’s Data and Analytics Platform (DataDivers project Horizon), now used by other Telethon Kids projects. The platform launched in April 2023.