It seems there is a political need for Minister Coonan to be a little flexible with the truth. This is something you can’t quite get away with when reporting to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Today we have the following release and have a better outline of what is planned:
ASX / MEDIA ANNOUNCEMENT
WSS e-health software in pioneering Chronic Disease Management Network Broadband Based Service Aims to Transform the Treatment of Chronic Disease
Melbourne, Victoria – 26 July 2007: Working Systems Solutions (ASX:WSS), today announced that their e-health connectivity and consumer products will be a key component of a pioneering Chronic Disease Management Network project (CDM-Net) across the Barwon region in Victoria.
The $8.7 million CDM-Net is being led by Precedence Health Care in collaboration with Barwon Health.
The Australian Government is contributing $2 million under the Clever Networks Program and the Victorian Government a further $2 million through the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, the Department of Human Services, and Multi Media Victoria.
CDM-Net involves a consortium of leading industry and health care organizations, including Barwon Health, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel, Working Systems Solutions, Diabetes Australia Victoria and the GP Association of Geelong. Research and evaluation of CDM-Net will be carried out by Monash, Deakin and Victoria Universities with the assistance of CSIRO’s ehealth Research Centre. CDM-Net will be developed for use in the Barwon South Western Region of Victoria, reaching from Geelong to the South Australia border.
Precedence Health Care CEO, Professor Michael Georgeff said, “By helping doctors plan, track and intensively manage the care of people with diabetes, the evidence indicates that we may be able to reduce hospital admissions and other adverse events by more than 50%. CDM-Net will do this by using the Internet to connect and share information across a patient’s entire care team, including doctors, specialists, hospitals, and other care providers. It will continuously monitor health parameters of patients, such as blood glucose levels and medications, helping them to adhere to their care plans by sending them reminders and alerts.”
The Minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan in her announcement of the Australian Government grant said, “Chronic illness requires close monitoring and ongoing management across an entire team of care professionals.
“People suffering from chronic disease need to be provided with a care plan, detailing medications, treatments, tests, and referrals tailored to their specific circumstances, and CDM-Net will facilitate that. The project will support the roll out of chronic disease management applications in urban, regional, remote and rural Australia while fostering Australian information communication technology innovation.
”Senator Coonan said a key concept behind the solution is an “open” network of services. “This allows different organisations, including private sector organisations, to ’plug in’ to the network.
“CDM-Net will be initially implemented in the Barwon South Western Region of Victoria, however it has the potential to be rolled out across other regions of Victoria and nationally,” Senator Coonan said.
WSS CEO, Mathew Cherian said, “Our e-health portfolio will contribute many of the key software infrastructure components that CDM-Net will assemble and build on.
“The underlying open connectivity, SMS reminders, secure referral messaging and workflow management have all been proven in a variety of projects using our e-switch software platform. Similarly, our shared care Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software for diabetes (betterdiabetes.com) and Mental Health (MHAGIC) are recognised as world-class solutions.
“CDM-Net is a significant project for WSS representing an opportunity to bring our proven ehealth capabilities and credentials together in a world class private-public sector joint initiative to deliver better health outcomes for consumers.”
So what is different?
1. We now have an apparently $8.7 Million project.
2. We now have a range of partners so wide they will trip over each other. There are also a good few with a substantial profit motive.
3. We have a proprietary commercial software provider doing the hard work – the openness of all this is yet to be proven if it actually exists.
4. The project almost replicates the old HealthConnect Diabetes Care trials – South Brisbane as I recall – openEHR and all that – never evaluated that I have seen.
5. The Ministerial Press Release simply did not describe what is planned.
Will all this actually work and make a difference – I doubt it – but many people will have a satisfying cash infusion.
There are many examples of such diabetes related projects overseas that have worked so it is unclear just why a trial is even necessary – but so many get some payoff if one is conducted!
This report from iHealthBeat must raise some concerns:
July 19, 2007
Report: IT Useful in Managing Diabetes, but Cost is a Concern
Providers can use IT to help manage patients with type 2 diabetes, but costs outweigh the savings for many of the technologies, according to a new report from the Center for Information Technology Leadership, Health Data Management reports.
However, the use of electronic diabetes registries and clinical decision-support software are the exceptions, according to the report, called "The Value of Information Technology-Enabled Diabetes Management." Researchers estimate that use of diabetes registries could save $14.5 billion in health care expenditures over 10 years and that clinical decision support software could save $10.6 billion over the same period.
….. (see the rest at the iHealthBeat site)
I hope those running the trial have actually read the available evidence and it’s a bit sad Ministerial press releases do not actually explain what is going on.
Thank heavens we have the ASX to provide at least one version of the truth! Note we still have no idea if Precedence Health Care has any capability to deliver given DoHA seemed not to and this trial is hardly a test of open network services given the proprietary solution (standards compliant though it may be – or plan to be) involved.
A question – does anyone know if Presence Health Care is more than a shell company? Public information is not that easy to find – and should be given the part the Commonwealth and Vic Health are playing!
Disclaimer (Sensibly, I think, I do hold a few shares in Working Systems – may they prosper in all this for my pension fund! Sadly I don’t think it moves Australian e-Health ahead much given it has all been done before.)
Even with the extra information provided this trial has all the feel of another one of those strategically unfocused and unaligned projects from which little, if any good, will result. It could only happen in the current national e-health strategic vacuum where AHIC, DoHA and NEHTA are essentially asleep at the wheel.
Note: because this is breaking news the link to my full BCG Submission will go up next week!
David.
ps. It's amazing how some comment can suddenly cause an "under - construction" web site to develop a huge page of logos. I hope all those organisations are comfortable with that!
D.
6 comments:
How did you get to $8.7 million. My calculator stopped at $4.00 million($2M + $2M). (Must be old technology).
Where is the other $4.7 million of lolly coming from? (Holding my breath in eager anticipation).
Hi,
The rest it would seem is coming from all the other parties. I didn't add it up - the Working Systems people who wrote the press release did the figuring.
IBM, Cisco and Intel have very deep pockets!
David.
Surely the fact that Michael Georgeff is on the board of Working Systems must raise some alarm bells with these funding agencies. The relationship between the project manager (purse holder) and the technology provider could hardly be considered arms-length!
Hi David,
Once again may I commend you on keeping the spin doctors honest. This latest blog entry reminded me of an electronic health care records project which I participated some two years ago. In the submission for funding through DCITA, two vendors 'committed' roughly 100k 'in kind' - which of course gave more substance to the request for funding from you and I, the humble tax payer. That's all fine and well, but when it came to the crunch the 'in kind' became 'kind of', 'maybe' - and ultimately there was no real way of realising this supposed financial committment. No problem, the way we reported back to the DCITA was simply a comfirmation that the 'in kind' had been delivered - and that was that! It is scary how easy it was for vendors with a profit-based motive to:
1. Get involved in a project almost entirely funded by the commonwealth
2. Commit, but not deliver the promised resources and services.
3. and of course, talk-up their "leading role" and their "key contribution" to this "innovative" and "critical" initiative
yeah, right.
And of course, no one wanted to rock the boat (for that would jeopardise future trips back to the trough of public money) - so everybody reports, smiles and says what a great outcome!
Spooky.
Working Systems Solutions Board: (from ASX site):
Mr Steven L Pynt (Chairman, Non Exec. Director)
Mr A Mathew Cherian (CEO)
Prof. Michael Georgeff (Non Exec. Director)
Mr Chris Fullerton (Non Exec. Director)
Mr Peter Curigliano (CFO)
Just for the record! The $8.7m figure is pretty close to the mark, so I'm informed.
WSS showed a net loss of $595,573 in the half year to December 2006, of which the company's e-health division accounted for $233,854.
Dear AusHitMan,
As someone a little closer to the project I can assure you that the commercial in-kind from the large organisations and commercial gain for this project for them is very low. They will likely deliver on the in-kind, and have very low risk positions in terms of delivery. As a previous comment mentioned, it is largely a profile raising exercise for them. The problem is that this does give the appearance of support for the project per-se, when it is not the case. I would hope and expect that Government has sufficient maturity to see through this in-kind support and look at the detail of who is to deliver this project before committing the funds. I share your concern about the consortium's abilities, especially for those parties who are responsible for the core of the delivery.
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