E-Health Features on ABC Radio National’s National Interest.

It was good to see E-Health getting an outing on the radio this weekend.

E-Health agenda faces privacy and fiscal barriers

listen now | download audio

The Federal Government is being encouraged to introduce universal online patient records - in other words, an e-health system under which any health care provider anywhere in Australia would have immediate electronic access to your full medical history.

Digital patient records are seen as a way to cut costs, improve care and avoid dangerous medical mix-ups - but there are concerns about privacy and questions about how quickly such a network can be constructed.

Earlier this year the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission called for personal e-health records to be available for every Australian by 2012.

But a leading industry figure warns the whole venture could be derailed if it is rushed and he suggests a step-by-step approach is a better way to go.

Guests

Professor Michael Georgeff

Director of the e-Health Research Centre at Monash University and the Chief Executive Officer of Precedence Healthcare

More Here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2683525.htm

Being the ABC there will be audio downloadable from the site and there may be a transcript (It is hard to follow what the criteria are for that to happen looking at the last 12 months of shows)

Other than missing a clear declaration of commercial interests and being in receipt of a Government grant in the area, I thought this was really a very good interview that put many of the key issues very well indeed.

The points about just how unreasonable the time lines (we all get an E-Health record for 2012) were very well made indeed, as was the point of needing to move incrementally at all this.

It is now clear the good professor has grasped that just providing connectivity (even at high speed) will not make a huge difference, but that what will are the applications that are delivered by that network.

As I understood it this seemed to be different to the positions put previously, and this is all to the good!

See here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2007/07/david-agrees-with-dr-ian-reinecke.html

and here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2007/07/update-and-more-amazement-on-south.html

The professor also re-iterated his points on the importance of working to address chronic illness and I have to say I very much agree with that as a thrust we need to work hard at. It is definitely one of the ‘low hanging fruits’ where major benefit is possible with only modest expenditure.

It was good to see Peter Mares (the presenter – who had clearly researched the topic) again raise the link between the estimated $2Billion cost and the Senate ‘knock back’ of the means testing of the Private Health Insurance means testing legislation. He just might have noticed this on the blog:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2009/09/well-there-goes-money-for-e-health-for.html

If I had to disagree with anything said it would be that I felt he was a little more dismissive of the need to get public confidence in the privacy of their records right that I would be. Not done right this is a ‘show stopper’ in my view.

All in all – good stuff! Well worth a listen or download.

David.