Historical Context
The Telethon Kids Institute (the Institute) is committed to improving the health and development of children, young people and their families and communities. Telethon Kids produces one of the most comprehensive medical research impact reports in Australia. The report includes case studies and indicators of impact showcasing their great work. Since 2018 Grow Impact has been used to collect information on indicators of impact from researchers, allowing Telethon Kids to demonstrate the impact of their research to stakeholders.
The Value of Grow Impact for Telethon Kids
Increased brand reputation and financial sustainability
Data from Grow Impact helps populate the Telethon Kids annual Impact Report, a key instrument for showing stakeholders the impact of their research.
Our annual Impact Report encapsulates the breadth and depth of the impact of Telethon Kids’ research translation. Information from Grow Impact is included in the Impact Report to show stakeholders how our research is improving child health and development. I have found the metrics from Grow Impact very powerful to demonstrate how our researchers affect real-world change by working with community, sharing their knowledge, informing decision making and improving guidelines, policy and practice. The relationships that the Impact Report help us develop are integral to the reputation and financial sustainability of our organisation.
Jonathan Carapetis (Executive Director)
Created contemporary information about research for the community
The information from Grow Impact helps the community stay connected with Telethon Kids. Information on research projects is used to populate their external website.
Telethon Kids Institute has been using Grow Impact for several years to collect information from researchers about their team and research activities. This information is used by the Communications team in a number of ways including to develop metrics for the Impact Report and to update our website with team and project information.
The Impact Report is our annual flagship publication that showcases research making a difference. It includes written case studies as well as infographics that summarise a range of metrics that demonstrate research impact. To create these infographics, information is extracted from Grow Impact including: collaborations with other research organisations, industry, government, and national and international networks; involvement in external decision-making groups; instances our researchers are asked to provide expertise; our contributions to guidelines, policy and practice; translation of our research into tools or products; and active involvement in intervention studies. This is data we would not be able to access from another central source.
As we continue to use Grow Impact in the future, it has great potential to demonstrate how research is making an impact over time. With research teams adding their information annually, Grow Impact contains an ongoing set of rich data that is useful and useable across the organisation.
Tammy Gibbs, Senior Communications Manager
Researchers and program managers see value in Grow Impact
Grow Impact is used across the organisation at Telethon Kids. Research impact information is often provided by researchers and program managers. Here are some of the things they liked about Grow Impact:
― Satisfying to see the achievements for a team in the one place ― Older entries are kept and can be modified ― Well organised and easy to navigate ― The dropdown menus for relevant questions ― User friendly and self-explanatory. Researchers
― Able to enter data year-round in real time ― The fact it retains last year’s information also, particularly given many of our projects extend across multiple years ― Relatively intuitive to use. As a program manager it’s a handy repository of info to quickly look things up. Program Managers
Lowered the cost and improved the quality of reporting to government, funders and community
Grow Impact has minimised the burden of collecting data for reporting to government on grant outcomes.
Data from Grow Impact is essential for our outcome reporting to State Government in relation to the significant infrastructure funding received annually by our organisation. Before Grow Impact was available, we had to contact each individual researcher included in the report to collect their information manually. This was very time consuming. Grow Impact has streamlined this process for us and has greatly improved the quality of the data we provide in our report.
Tara McLaren, Head of Research Development
Grow Impact has helped minimise the burden of collecting research impact information at Telethon Kids.
I have been using Grow Impact for three years now and have found the system to be very user-friendly. The dropdown menus are easy to navigate and add information as required. The projects listed under each of the research teams are easy to access and update for the current year’s activities. With each user given a login for their own projects, they can log in any time during the life of the project to update the information as required. This helps to ensure the information in Grow Impact is current for the generation of annual reports. This system is a vast improvement from the Institute’s prior reporting methods of having to rely on ‘cutting and pasting’ Word documents from previous year’s data. Information would be lost in cross posting of emails, which quite often lead to errors or duplicates, and was quite time consuming.
Marina Stubbs, Administrative Officer
Improved how professional services support research
The Telethon Kids Institute has over three hundred active research projects. Grow Impact has been used to identify those projects that involve Aboriginal research, as an example, to connect researchers with professional services that can support their research in this area. In response to enquiries from specific stakeholders, such as government, Grow Impact has been used to identify projects of interest to that stakeholder, such as research in certain geographical regions.
