Associate Professor Niranjan Bidargaddi

Niranjan Bidargaddi, BEng C.Sc, PhD, is the Associate Professor of Digital Health at College of Medicine and Public Health Flinders University. He leads the Digital Health lab based at Flinders Digital Health Research Centre Tonsley and SAHMRI. He is experienced in development, trial and translation of digital health programs (eg: Mental health apps search). He trained as a Computer Science Engineer, holds a PhD from Monash University (2007), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at CSIRO in e-health (2008). Between 2009 to 2016, he worked in a largely operational health informatics role in South Australian Health Department. He was awarded a MRFF TRIP Fellow in 2017. He is a Chief Investigator of the ARC Industry Tranformation Research Hub on Digital Enhaced Living (2018-24), and has acted in leadership roles with three Cooperative Research Centers including Digital Health CRC.

His current research focus is to learn all the ways health interactions go wrong and finding ways to fix these problems in contexts where digital mediations are tightly interweaved into the fabric of every day life. His lab has implemented innovative technologies that together are providing the building blocks of health care in the future. Developed using co-design and participatory approaches with consumers and tested with different populations the solutions address three needs: (a) specific guidance from trusted gateways when people seek health related information online (b) navigators which audit digital footprints with different parts of the health system particularly in people with chronic and ongoing conditions and use nudges to ensure subsequent appointments, medications, referrals happen appropriately in the community  (c) support people enact health behaviours by pushing advise in smaller chunks at opportune moments in daily life.

In parallel the lab also aims to understand and identify solutions to harmful digital mediations in every day life.