The establishment of a functional "learning health system” at the level of a clinical service, a hospital/precinct, or an entire health region is generally regarded as desirable goal for addressing major challenge of sustainability in the health care system. Learning health systems, when fully functional, deliver data driven health care improvement, needs driven research and innovation and support a culture of embedded research, innovation and systems improvement by bringing together the domains of health data management, knowledge management and change management. Frameworks, key elements, essentially ingredients, enabling infrastructure and requisite partnerships have been described in the international literature and examples in Australian context will be summarised in the presentation. The potential benefits sustainability impact of establishing learning health system's will be reviewed to illustrate the opportunities for the Australian healthcare system and its key partners in the academic and commercial sectors.