Sounds good at first blush – the devil will be in the detail!
Health ministers agree to share patient e-records
Siobhain Ryan | December 06, 2008
Article from: The Australian
HEALTH ministers have finally agreed on a national plan to share patients' electronic records, on the same day a new study slammed scattergun spending of almost $1.3 billion on state-based e-health schemes.
At a meeting in Brisbane yesterday, they gave the tick to the strategy commissioned in April amid controversy over delays, cost blowouts and resignations in e-health projects and bodies across the country.
Electronic records for patients are currently held separately, if at all, across GP surgeries, hospitals, government agencies and other health centres, allowing only patchy sharing of information.
The gaps have resulted in duplicate consultations, tests and treatments and prescribing mistakes, with past studies calculating the net benefits of better electronic record-keeping at up to $8.7 billion over the first 10 years.
More here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24758462-23289,00.html
David.
4 comments:
This is great news! On ePHR's it was interesting to read that MMedicalRecords.com have been rescued from bankruptcy by Favrille although they make no mention that their cash flow had dried up in the press release obviously. Nor did it mention that two previous CEO's of their Australian operation are suing them for non-payment of fees or the current ASIC investigation into the company relating to Russell Armstrong listing himself as the company secretary whilst being bankrupt himself! Oh you have to love the way our american cousins do business! BTW, what happened to the Australian Facebook health portal? Was that real or just puff?
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/081204/lath528.html?.v=35
There was talk about a community health portal at the 'Kev Love In' earlier in the year. As is the tendency with these things the talk is rarely followed by action. Some might say that the 'health lane' of the information super highway is closed for repairs.
It was nothing to do with Facebook or Myspace for that matter, that was simply the term used at the meeting, as I recall "health facebook" or there abouts. Yahoo has launched a health portal but it doesn't relate to PHR's (http://health.yahoo.com/). Google's health portal does link to PHR data from various health providers but is American centric (https://www.google.com/health/directory?cat=importrecords). I guess a good start would be an Australian version of the latter, which looks like it's free to boot!
Microsoft is exploring a launch of HealthVault in Australia. Meetings are happening.
Good thing? Your mileage may vary. As with all these things, the devil will be in the details.
The Australian Privacy Foundation Health Sub-committee is experimenting with it soon.
Jan Whitaker
Australian Privacy Foundation
www.privacy.org.au
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