An Australian e-Health Strategy – Why, What and What Could It Achieve?

It seems your humble commentator has been ruffling the feathers of the great and powerful in the e-Health domain. I say this not because anything negative has happened but rather that some of my suggestions appear to be causing at least a minor response. It could be, however, that I am just an optimist and the improved information flows and so on were going to happen anyway. No matter, it is all to the good. Well done NEHTA.

The central issue in e-health as I see it is that Australia has not developed, articulated, discussed and agreed a National e-Health Strategy, which brings together all the work being undertaken around the country, assembles it into some sort of coherent whole and provides forward direction and leadership for all involved. In response to the apparent movement from NEHTA I want here to expand my arguments and suggest just what the National Strategy I am proposing may look like.

Before doing that I must answer the “why do we need one?” question. This is easy. Without a plan in virtually every walk of life there is a tendency to see a lack of progress, waste of resources and repeated false starts. The reason this sounds familiar is that this accurately describes the National progress in the e-Health domain. As a colleague so delightfully puts it – all we have seen is largely ‘Brownian Motion’ with no solid progress in any direction. In large projects, such as National e-Health, even with a plan progress can be difficult and slow, but without one failure is inevitable. The second reason we need a plan in my view is that we humans work best and contribute most if the goals and objectives are clear – hence the need not only for a plan, but for it to be publicly articulated and communicated.

On the basis that we need the plan, what should it contain and what factors and constraints should it consider.

Before anything is done the first step is to ensure it makes sense to proceed with planning. This is done by developing a generalised Business Case for National e-Health implementation. If overseas experience is any guide this will confirm the need for action and a plan.

What is involved in doing a plan? The first thing the National Strategy needs is a current view of just what is going on everywhere, and what is working well and needs to be preserved and encouraged. Next, once we have worked out where we are we need to work out where we need to be. This will involve a lot of consultation with all interested stakeholders to develop a vision of future Health Service delivery and then ensure we can put in place the technology to make it work. Fortunately there has been a lot of work done on the desired future state of the Health System and this can be utilised to guide the planning of the supporting technology initiatives.

Out of the requirements and consultative process there should emerge a number of options reflecting the use of different technical approaches, different priorities, different levels of preparedness to invest and so on. These will ideally be worked up into three or four roadmaps and then a second consultative process with stakeholders and the public will choose the most appropriate. This roadmap will then be worked up, in detail, and all the implications for consumers, professionals and others, risks, costs and so on thought through.

At this point there will exist both a clear reason for action and agreement at a high level as to what direction should be taken.

What might an overall strategy look like. The objectives and mission are easy. What we want from technology is better co-ordination of care (only answer questions once, don’t fall between the system’s cracks etc), greater safety with relevant knowledge provided to carers at the point of care, greater efficiency of service delivery at all levels and ideally our own little personal health record that has all our health information securely stored so that when needed it can be made available to those who need it – our doctor, nurse or who ever.

What technologies and systems do we need? Essentially there are five.

First all our hospitals need clinically rich and administratively effective internal systems that enhance patient safety and operational efficiency. These you can buy off the shelf from a range of Australian and overseas vendors – (IBA, Cerner, etc). These need to be advanced systems that provide excellent care documentation and physician order entry with advanced decision support.

Second our GPs and Specialists need similarly effective systems which manage all aspects of our care electronically and can receive and transmit information (referrals, prescriptions, test requests etc) securely and safely. These can be obtained reasonably cheaply but ideal ones are still a little way off.

Thirdly we need service providers (Specialists, Laboratories, Radiological Practices, Pharmacists etc) to provide their product (i.e. reports etc) electronically. Systems to do all of this are available off the shelf.

Fourthly we need in place a secure set of message standards to allow the information to flow where it needs to go safely and privately. These exist in simple form and are improving quite quickly.

Lastly we need some Standards to ensure all information that flows can be properly and reliably linked to the individual it relates to and contains information in a form that can be properly actioned by the receiving system. These largely exist today

With some will, and a rational funding plan that pays those who create the information that is of benefit to those who get to use it, implementation need take no longer than three to four years. The Implementation Plan will need to adopt a simple, walk before you run, bottom up style but is eminently doable for reasonable cost given the potential benefits.

There will be some issues with integration with previous initiatives but there is nothing that is not doable in all this, other than the need to have a plan and the will and resources to execute it.

What could this achieve? The answer has not yet been fully worked out but if the experience overseas is any guide savings of 5-10% of the health budget and a considerable reduction in clinical errors of all sorts is well within our grasp. We should stop talking about it and get on with it!

(Please note - for the expert readers - this commentary is very high level and lacks detail - but I am convinced it is basically sound - comments welcome!)

David