Our journey began when a co-founder witnessed a serious adverse patient outcome influenced by poor clinical documentation. This sparked a personal mission to explore strategies for improving clinical documentation across Australia.
At the same time, Nicole Draper took on the task of enhancing clinical documentation at a large metropolitan private hospital.
Nicole Draper successfully established one of the first clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs in Australia.
Clinical Documentation Improvement Australia (CDIA) was formally incorporated.
The two co-founders joined forces, driven by their shared passion for clinical documentation improvement (CDI).
Within the year, CDIA had secured partnerships with hospitals across all of Australia’s east coast states.
We continued to grow through partnerships with the second largest private hospital network in Australia and the largest private hospital network in Western Australia.
We went international, partnering with the largest public hospital in New Zealand & the most prestigious hospital in Saudi Arabia.
We hosted the inaugural conference dedicated to CDI for countries using ICD-10-AM. The conference attracted delegates from 8 countries and every state of Australia.
We released the first CDS certification for ICD-10-AM, promoting recognition and career progressions for CDSs.
1,000th CDIA Community Member joins
CDIA awarded the Madinah Cluster CDI Project in KSA
CDIA launches its Audit Selector Technology
CDIA facilitated the third National CDI Conference
Dr. Joe Vincent is a medical doctor and health services manager with extensive experience in CDI. He began his career as a resident medical officer in neurology in India before moving to Australia, where he completed a Master’s in Advanced Health Services Management with a major in Health Informatics.
As one of the founding members of the CDI service at Gold Coast Health, Joe played a pivotal role in establishing the service and supporting the development of a real-time digital clinician query process. Over the past six years, he has strengthened engagement with clinical teams, driven significant improvements in documentation quality, and delivered measurable outcomes in both patient safety and organisational performance.
Joe is recognised for his leadership in the “Ink the Link” initiative, which has delivered substantial revenue recovery and sustainable improvements to documentation quality across multiple specialties. His ability to bridge the gap between clinicians and health information teams has contributed to a significant cultural shift in documentation practices at Gold Coast Health, with clinicians increasingly recognising its value in patient care and system sustainability.
With a strong background in health informatics, project management and change leadership, Joe brings to CDIA a proven track record of innovation, clinician engagement, and system-level improvement. He is passionate about advancing clinical documentation improvement nationally to support safer patient outcomes, empower clinicians, and ensure health services are sustainably resourced for the future.