The highlights of the year which are listed below complement the ongoing maintenance and development work that is essential for this information service. Good relationships are at the heart of successful partnerships, as our research project with ADGP on links between Divisions and universities has found. To achieve our aims we establish relationships with many people from our stakeholder groups in research, policy and Divisions, and communicate and exchange information with them in many formats. We also endeavour to establish organisational relationships to counteract the vulnerability of individual relationships to staff turnover in our stakeholder groups and within PHC RIS.

2005 was a year of staff changes at PHC RIS. Professor Louis Pilotto (Co-Director of PHC RIS since 2001) left South Australia to take up a position in NSW in March 2005. PHC RIS staff who left in 2005 were Karen Siegmann who had organised the GP&PHC Research conferences for many years, Vicki Sellick (website coordinator); Kirsti Hann and Sophie Guy research associates working on the Annual Survey of Divisions team and Leigh Kennedy, administrative officer. Barbara Beacham reduced her hours with PHC RIS while completing her PHCRED researcher Development Program fellowship. We are most grateful to all these staff members for their contributions to PHC RIS and wish them well in their new positions. Dr Ellen McIntyre, Manager of PHC RIS, worked very hard with Fiona Thomas, PHC RIS administrator, to recruit replacement staff so that we finished the year with a full complement of staff. We welcomed Dr Ann-Louise Hordacre, Sheri Millar, Simon Patterson, Miriam Keane, Sarah Eckermann, Jess Tungthamthiti, and Belinda Martus.

It has been a privilege to be the Director of PHC RIS in 2005, to contribute to an exciting program of work produced by skilled and committed staff members, and to collaborate with so many good people in the primary health care research sector in Australia.

Highlights

2005 was the 10th anniversary of the Primary Health Care Research and Information Service (PHC RIS) and the first year of a new four-year funding agreement with the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. Highlights from 2005 include:

• The very successful GP & PHC Research Conference in Adelaide attended by over 400 primary health care researchers, policy advisors, and Division Network members. View report
• The redevelopment of the PHC RIS website to accommodate the rapidly expanding content of resources and links, and facilitate access and searches. View report
• The development and implementation of the Roadmap Of Australian primary health care Research (ROAR) which facilitates access to information about current researchers, research projects, research organisations and funding opportunities on the PHC RIS website. View report
• Maintenance of quick and efficient access to comprehensive information on the PHC RIS website to the plans and reports of all Divisions for the period 1999-2005. View report
• Contributing to the development of the Divisions Network National Quality and Performance System. View report
• Preliminary analysis of Divisions’ plans for 2005-06 to assist understanding of the use of the new Planning and Reporting (P&R) pro forma. View report
• The production of the 159-page report and two-page summary of the 2003-2004 Annual Survey of Divisions (ASD), and the provision of feedback about the survey to individual organisations in the Divisions network. View report
• The production of two papers focussing on networks in primary health care and measuring research impact. View report
• The completion of a successful collaborative research project with ADGP on understanding effective links between universities and Divisions of General Practice. View report
• The exchange of information through effective relationships with key stakeholders through personal, email, phone and written means of communication. View report
• The successful management of PHC RIS finances with Flinders University to achieve a balanced budget. View report