This popped up a few days ago.
Progress in healthcare IT
Date January 30, 2014
Charles Wright
Australia is late to the party when it comes to online health resources.
When an international health information authority, Professor Sir Muir Gray, told a conference in Sydney a few months ago that a new revolution in healthcare was being driven by three forces - citizens, knowledge and the internet - he could have added that Australia was somewhat late to the party.
In Britain, where Professor Gray was formerly chief knowledge officer for its National Health Service - and one of the creators of the Cochrane Collaboration that systematically reviews healthcare research - the revolution is under way.
By contrast, having just last year witnessed the comprehensive bungling by Canberra health bureaucrats of a project that should have produced widespread, practical benefits from a national personal electronic healthcare record, the necessary experience that could duplicate Britain's success has apparently either been seriously demotivated or lost to the industry.
The NHS also suffered conspicuous defects in its multibillion-pound National Program for IT project, but it has not stifled innovation in making vital healthcare information available to the public.
England has an extraordinary team of IT professionals and clinicians working with European colleagues on what is essentially an international collaborative network of health consumers and practitioners.
The results promise to transform the conventional healthcare culture, by providing free access to high-quality information that was once available only to diligent, well-placed health professionals.
Lots more here:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/progress-in-healthcare-it-20140129-31le5.html
This paragraph really caught my eye:
“By contrast, having just last year witnessed the comprehensive bungling by Canberra health bureaucrats of a project that should have produced widespread, practical benefits from a national personal electronic healthcare record, the necessary experience that could duplicate Britain's success has apparently either been seriously demotivated or lost to the industry.”
This certainly is a change of view from what we read from the NEHTA sponsored blog Mr Wright used to write up until August 2012.
See here:
All I can say it is very nice to see that Mr Wright, who spent a good few of his blogs suggesting I was totally unhinged, to suggest there were problems with the PCEHR program, has finally had the blinkers fall from his eyes.
Better late than never! I also have to say I think he is underestimating just how much good eHealth work is being done in Australia, separate from the DoH/ NEHTA hegemony.
David.
4 comments:
Charles Wright was a bargain basement spruiker for NEHTA. He may as well have had one of those microphones you see people holding outside cheap jewellery shops in secondary business district shopping centres.
You could go back and review his various arguments supporting the PCEHR and vilifying anybody who dared speak out but you would be wasting your time.
I do not know Charles Wright but remember the bile he used to write about you and the commentary on this blog and it was pretty extreme.
And now we find out his real views. Could see that coming a mile away.
Finally on the Wright track. More's the pity he didn't figure that out sooner. Dearne it!
David, on a broader scale of where we should be at your readers may enjoy/will benefit from reading the following three books.
1. Weed LL, Weed L. Medicine in Denial. Version 1.0 ed: Createspace; 2011.
2. Surowiecki j. The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor, editor. New York: Random House; 2005.
3. Topol E, The Creative Destruction of Medicine. 2012.
Re "The Wisdom of Crowds", you may also want to read "Wrong. Why Experts Keep Failing Us - and How to Know When Not to Trust Them", chapter four "The Idiocy of Crowds".
That chapter starts with a quote from Bertrand Russell "Even when all the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken"
And while we are recommending books, here's another one:
"Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences" by Edward Tenner
I'm not endorsing any particular viewpoint, except observing that foxes generally make better predictions than hedgehogs.
Post a Comment