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, January 29, 2013

AusHealthIT Poll Number 152 – Results – 29th January, 2013.

The question was:

Are NEHTA And DoHA Competent To Be Managing The Delivery Of The E-Health Program In Australia?

Yes - They Are Fabulous 5% (2)
Maybe - Doing An Average Job 5% (2)
Neutral 0% (0)
Probably Not - They Are Not Doing Well 20% (8)
No - It Is An Awful Travesty 63% (25)
I Have No Idea 8% (3)
Total votes: 40
Very interesting. A clear majority are by no means convinced the people in charge have a clue what they are doing.
Again, many thanks to those that voted! 
Please Note: I am always interested in ideas for Polls. Send your suggestions via comment or e-mail!
David.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, since you ask.

I find that your polls don't really inform me of anything. Knowing the readership of this blog, I work on the assumption that 80-90% of the voters think that NeHTA/DoHA are a bunch of muppets, that PCEHR was ill-advised, and that in general eHealth is being poorly managed.

On that basis, any question that can be summarised as "do you think DoHA/NeHTA are doing a good job" has a very predictable response. Further on that basis, there is no particular value in repeated polls along those lines.

Polls that could be more interesting would be along the lines of:
- If we didn't have PCEHR, what do you think we'd have done instead for eHealth (with a list of options)
- What level of registered participants of PCEHR by June 2013 would you consider reasonably successful in the context of other eHealth programs in Australia
- If PCEHR were to be extended, what functions would you see as top priority for next inclusion

Not saying stop all the other polls, just that it might be interesting to mix it up a bit with something that doesn't have an option in it that can be summarised as "I don't like NeHTA", and therefore has the potential to tell us something we didn't already know.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Good idea...now just please suggest a list of options for each of the questions and I will run them - No 2 of the 3 I can make up so need ideas on numbers 1 and 3!

David.

Anonymous said...

On the first:
- a federated system, where each GP, clinician and hospital holds their own records, and the system of a clinician wanting a summary must call each GP, clinician and hospital individually to get the documents
- a federated system with a central index (perhaps XDS based), so a document list can be achieved from calling a central place, but any document must be retrieved from the individual GP, clinician or hospital systems
- a federated system of repositories, where those who don't want to run their system 24x7 can upload to a repository that hosts on their behalf (sort of similar to PCEHR, but implemented by different people)

On the third, functions could be suggested by others, but my list would be:
- imaging, perhaps based on DICOM
- pathology content, based on HL7v2
- pathology content, based on HL7v3
- pathology ordering
- ability for consumers to load medical history (for example, where they've changed doctors and have the paper files at home)

Trevor3130 said...

Australian Crime Commission in its submission to Senate Inquiry into the gathering and use of criminal intelligence writes
Criminal intelligence is presently stored in more than 30 systems operated by Australian law enforcement, policing, national security and other government agencies, with limited interoperability across each.
CrimTrac, in its submission, is punting for a federated system.

Trevor3130 said...

Neal Patterson (Cerner) took part in a recent Health Information Exchange hearing. Some of his points (pdf) include -
1. Cerner believes the individual should own a copy of their complete health record.
2. Cerner is committed to exploring an industry-led approach to the voluntary use of patient identifiers based on existing strong credentials, such as a driver's license or other established identity.
Off the top of head reactions to that.
Is Cerner hoping to be among the select group in the Health IT that will be Too Big To Fail?
What on earth does Patterson believe is a "complete health record"? If it's what I think, he is deluded, but, boy-o-boy, that line will keep $$$ flowing into vendors, without solving anything. A dream machine, until someone in Govt pulls the plug.
Will access to my PCEHR be as quick & easy as access to my banking records?
While I believe a National Identity Management Scheme (Oz) will come sooner rather than later, and will prove to be the linch-pin for rolling NEHR, I'm still scratching my head at Patterson's ideas on identity assurance.
Will a MS-Windows environment ever be secure enough for NEHR? Cite today's scare about UPnP.
Most important of all, in terms of strategy in getting voters to foot the bill for NEHR, we should get access to full costs of all epsiodes of healthcare.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

re: "Cerner believes the individual should own a copy of their complete health record"

I have a few questions.

1. Does Cerner believe that all individuals have exactly the same needs with respect to owning their health record?

2. What does "own a copy" mean?

3. Who else may own a copy of that individual's health record?

4. Who has control over the individual's health record?

5. What are those controls?

and as for the rest of the statement, when I hear phrases like:

* we think the potential to bend the cost curve has never been greater.

* the call for a more aggressive approach to data liquidity and exchange.

* Cross-vendor data liquidity is a necessary requirement for the successful evolution of these new business models.

* we now have the chance to move into what should be a post-interface contract era.

* There is no reason that we can’t have plug-and-play data liquidity delivered at commodity prices.

I wonder what the heck is he talking about.

Anonymous said...

He is creating short sound bites for consultants to replay to their health clients and for bureaucrats to seed into their political masters speeches; in short technology babble to constipate the mind.