Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I Am Not Sure I Can Stand Too Much More of This! The PCEHR Seems To Have A New Name!

What on earth is going on (that is the polite way of saying it I really meant WTF!).
I came across this today.

Clinical E-Newsletter

Welcome to the fourth clinician e-newsletter brought to you by the Clinical Unit of the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) providing information on key issues and current events related to e-health in Australia.
Edition:   04 Date:  Tuesday, 27 September 2011
The lead item is this:

Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) aka (Personal Electronic Health Record Summary (PEHRS)

NEHTA has commenced preliminary work on developing the concept of operations for a PCEHR: bringing together many ideas about what could be on an Electronic Health Record Summary. The Clinical Leads and other stakeholders participated in a two-day workshop in Brisbane in mid-July to contribute to the development of a hymn sheet to which there was some agreement and therefore a fixed ‘target’ PEHRS which could then be socialised and e-health architecture built around it. This document will form the basis for drawing in consumers and clinicians in particular into the developments. A workshop will be held in August to complete this work. Additional workshops involving the NEHTA Clinical Lead group and consumers to discuss options for the proposed PCEHR/ PEHRS are planned.
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Go here for other news:
What on earth does this mean? Who has slipped their moorings? Do we need any more acronyms? Does aka mean ‘also known as’? Where has this come from?
And WTF does this mean?
“The Clinical Leads and other stakeholders participated in a two-day workshop in Brisbane in mid-July to contribute to the development of a hymn sheet to which there was some agreement and therefore a fixed ‘target’ PEHRS which could then be socialised and e-health architecture built around it.
How are hymns involved and so on?
Walks off shaking head! They have utterly lost the plot is the only viable conclusion!
David.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi David
I've been following your blog for some time - just a heads up - the newsletter you mention today is actually from 26 July 2010 - the site is confusingly noting today's date - go to the 'clinician archive' on the left and click on the July date...

B said...

David,

My guess is that this Clinical E-Newsletter has re-escaped into the wild without due care and attention.

The URL contains the date July 2010.

The newsletter is #4, the most recent newsletter in the archives is #10, dated 15 April 2011

The brackets in the title do not match.

The statement "NEHTA has commenced preliminary work on developing the concept of operations for a PCEHR" does not fit with the ConOp having being finalised.

The reference "hymn sheet" is slang for "a standard approach" and is more often used as "singing from the same hymn sheet".

We could be critical and point out that if they can't even issue a newsletter, what hope is there for an eHealth Record, but let's not be so unkind.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Well now I am really confused!

David.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

I see what you mean - so they have given up on clinicians - no new newsletters in 15 months!

WTF again!

David.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Work this out!
# Subject Send Date
1 Clinicians Newsletter 15 April 2011 05:53
2 Clinicians Newsletter 21 February 2011 14:10
3 Clinicians Newsletter 15 December 2010 09:44
4 Clinicians Newsletter 10 November 2010 09:56
5 Clinicians Newsletter 06 October 2010 12:20
6 Clinicians Newsletter 31 August 2010 15:42
7 Clinicians Newsletter 26 July 2010 13:32

Nutters and idiots is my take!

David

Anonymous said...

NEHTA are working to a devilishly clever plan.

It may not be clear for many months but never doubt there is method to this madness.

Baldrick

Anonymous said...

This is "Post Modernism meets Software Engineering" and the common ground is very small. They can hype and sing hymns all they like but in the end it has to work and it will not.

Sadly the multi-national organisations have mastered quoting huge prices and nodding in agreement while in the background they know its garbage, but there is money in garbage. The stench around this whole process makes it clear its rotten to the core.

Even NEHTA employees know this but they are powerless to change it and if they try are shown the door. It seems that like the wiley coyote they are already off the cliff but are still going flat out in mid air. Everyone knows what happens next...

Jim Cocks said...

Obviously the hymn is the "Internationale", given the subsequent reference to the socialisation of things - as per the Hegel/Marx theory of dialectical materialism - although how the devil you build an ehealth architecture around the worker's flag being deepest Red escapes me for the moment. Perhaps a further insight will follow if I sleep on it! Really very sophisticated philosophical conference it would seem.

Anonymous said...

Yes we need hymns and lots of praying - because we need a MIRACLE to occur between now and July 2012!

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

The plot is just amazing. I tried to read the latest version from April, 2011 - six months ago:

Link is:

http://newsletter.nehta.gov.au/clinicians/clinicians-archive/archive/view/listid-7-clinicians/mailid-68-clinicians-newsletter

Great page - black on black on my browser (Firefox 6).

Struth!

David.

Anonymous said...

So, if you judge an organisation by it's web site.. isn't that like judging a book by it's cover? Do you go for that a lot?

Bruce Farnell said...

Hymn sheet... hmmm.
I don't object to NEHTA praying that it will all work out. I do object to it being their primary tactic.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

I don't think so - isn't a web site designed to communicate etc with its audience? Bit hard if you can't read it!

David.

Anonymous said...

What's a cover but to communicate with an audience? You can't usefully judge the work that's going on by the quality of the technical production work. Though they are related of course, just not that strongly

Anonymous said...

Just to try to pull these comments back from the brink of discussing the existentialism of NEHTA...

... aren't these "Care Summaries" sounding an awful lot like where the UK ended up in their national EHR project? (given the current status of that project, possibly not something to seek to emulate).

Do we have any sense for how much patient information is to be put into a central clinical data repository? I understand that there is an index, but how much meta data would be contained within that?

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

See the PCEHR Concept of Operations Document. It is all there. The proposed summary is a very full document compared with what the UK had in mind and will be much harder to develop, use and implement in my view.

David.