Here are a few I have come across the last week or so.
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General Comment
Clearly the big news for the week was the Departure of David Gonski as the Chair of NEHTA and the ascension of Dr Steve Hambleton to the role. I have provided some thoughts on this earlier.
Also interesting is the departure of Jane Halton from DoH to the inner circle of Government, but not, however, as close to the centre as she may have desired.
It is also interesting that it seems the GP Co-Payments seem to have a technical issue that may be pretty expensive to fix!
All in all quite a lively week.
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Gonski steps down as NeHTA chair, replaced by Hambleton
High profile corporate and education leader David Gonski has stepped down from his role as the chairman of the National eHealth Transition Authority and will be replaced by the immediate past president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Dr Steve Hambleton.
The changing of the guard comes as the cross-government body tasked with making a national electronic health and medical records scheme a functional reality faces a pivotal year after its funding was extended for just one year in the federal Budget.
The departure of Mr Gonski was widely anticipated as he is ineligible to serve a third term as chairman under NeHTA’s constitution.
Mr Gonski, whose name has since become synonymous with the ambitious education reforms of the former Labor Federal government, became the NeHTA’s chairman in 2008 and is widely credited with keeping the massive and frequently challenged project alive through his quiet but formidable style of diplomacy.
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Privacy fears curb e-health’s growth
June 25, 2014
Mark Eggleton
In a twist on the old highwayman demand of “Your money or your life” we finally have an answer when it comes to e-health. Our personal finances win while our health takes a back seat.
Right now most Australians when they want to get a snapshot of their financial situation can go online and find up-to-the-minute information on their bank balance and outstanding debts. We’re pretty comfortable with the level of security afforded our financial details and even happy to give out further details if we’re keen on purchasing goods or services. Unfortunately, we’re a little leery about having our health records available online beyond what’s stored in a computer on our GPs desk.
Security of data was one of the major focuses of the recent Big Data in Healthcare roundtable held by The Australian Financial Review in partnership with GE in Sydney with most participants agreeing it was an issue.
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Tech giants launch new e-health network
Christina Farr and Thomas Escritt
Dutch healthcare and lighting company Philips said it was teaming up with Salesforce, one of the biggest cloud-computing companies in the United States, to offer online management of chronic diseases.
The venture will involve a cloud-based software platform that will take data fed from networked medical devices in homes and hospitals to allow nurses and doctors to monitor the health of hundreds of patients simultaneously.
The companies said they would launch two new medical applications, Philips eCareCoordinator and Philips eCare Companion, later in the summer as part of the partnership.
Philips’ chief executive Frans van Houten told journalists in Amsterdam the services would make it easier and cheaper to monitor the health of patients.
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Verbal nursing handovers go digital
Posted Wed, 25/06/2014 - 14:00 by Fran Molloy
Dr Leif Hanlen is the Health Team Director at NICTA, Australia’s Information Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence in Canberra, where he is currently involved in several projects that focus on large scale ehealth data analysis – and have the potential to improve patient outcomes while also reducing workloads for health professionals.
A recently completed project used the text in hospital radiology reports to identify an infection, invasive aspergillosis, threatening transplant and cancer patients.
“We’re looking at text processing services that help the clinical work flow, rather than trying to develop a brand new text or health analytics box that adds to the clinical burden,” he says.
One key project involves recording and classifying the clinical data transferred in a typical nursing hand-over to improve accuracy of information and reduce the administrative burden.
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Jane Halton leaves Health for Finance, Treasury still open
By Julian Bajkowski on June 26, 2014 in Federal, Finance, Health & Social Services, Infrastructure, Jobs, Management
Prime Minster Tony Abbott has announced another round of musical chairs at for Canberra’s public service chiefs, but put off naming a replacement for outgoing Treasury head Martin Parkinson.
High profile Secretary of the Department of Health, Jane Halton will take on the role of nailing down government expenses as the head of the Department of Finance as a replacement for David Tune who has opted to retire from the Australian Public Service and will finish-up his term at the end of this week.
The move by Ms Halton to Finance, for a five year appointment, is likely to fuel continued speculation that she is a likely successor to incumbent APS chief and Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr Ian Watt.
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System to track GP visits ‘a big ask’
- The Australian
- June 24, 2014
Fran Foo
Technology Reporter
Sydney
TAXPAYERS will have to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars” to build a centralised database for 25 million people that would update in real time to cater for the Abbott government’s proposed $7 medical co-payment scheme, IT experts say.
The government has proposed that people pay $7 each time they visit a GP, get an X-ray or a blood test from July next year. A patient who visits a doctor and needs a pathology test and an X-ray will be slugged with $21 in upfront fees.
The $7 fee is applicable to everyone except concession card holders and children under 16 who will pay for the first 10 services combined.
The controversial plan has drawn the ire of consumers and many in the healthcare fraternity who say it marks the demise of universal access to healthcare in Australia.
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New breast cancer tests finds more cancers than traditional mammograms
Date June 26, 2014
Amy Corderoy
Health Editor, Sydney Morning Herald
Adding three-dimensional mammograms to normal mammograms can catch breast cancer earlier, a new study has found.
But experts warn that the study, while promising, does not show 3D mammograms provide any long-term benefits over traditional screening, which is provided free to all women aged over 40 in Australia.
The study analysed data from more than 450,000 examinations, some of which were only done with mammograms and others that used the combination test, which captures multiple images of breast tissue that are built up to provide a 3D image.
The combined test caught 41 per cent more cancers than traditional mammography alone, according to the research, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and funded by Hologic, which produces 3D mammography machines.
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Fitness bracelets ‘a dying business’, says Misfit CEO
- Katherine Rosman
- The Wall Street Journal
- June 25, 2014
IN another sign that the shine is coming off the much-ballyhooed wearable hardware market, health-tracking device maker Misfit is announcing today that its software and its iOS app will be compatible with the smartwatch from competitor Pebble.
Pebble says the partnership is part of its longstanding strategy to make its watch a dynamic tool for those who like to monitor fitness and health metrics. But for Misfit, the move is partially influenced by the anticipation of Apple’s rumoured plan to release a smartwatch later this year.
The Shine is sold in Apple stores, which makes the device particularly vulnerable.
“If you buy one of these [Apple] devices you’re not going to buy an activity tracker,” says Sonny Vu, Misfit’s chief executive, adding that he predicts Android-powered watches will undo the fitness bracelet market. “Why should we cling on to a dying a business?”
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Data from wearable devices could help
- Elizabeth Dwoskin and Joseph Walker
- The Wall Street Journal
- June 26, 2014
MANY runners and fitness fanatics have been quick to embrace wearable wireless tracking devices for measuring physical activity and calories burned. Now, a growing number of physicians are formally studying whether such “wearables” can improve patients’ health by spurring people to get moving.
Amy Wheeler, a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, hopes that wireless tracking devices can help motivate her obese patients to do what they haven’t been able to on their own: lose weight.
Last year, Dr Wheeler was one of a group of US doctors who gave FitLinxx pedometers to 126 patients with Type 2 diabetes, often related to poor diet and excess weight.
The pedometers tracked how many steps the patients took and linked to a software program that calculated whether they met their exercise goals. Based on their progress, data from their electronic medical records and whether it was sunny or rainy, patients would receive motivational tips via text message.
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Ambulance Victoria rushing data to hospital as well
Date June 24, 2014
Trevor Clarke
Ambulance Victoria has joined the big data movement by establishing a real time data exchange system to provide hospitals greater visibility of incoming patients' needs.
The organisation has been working with four hospital emergency departments in the state for the past two months to trial the new arrivals system.
“That is a real time reporting stack where we take a half million events, including GPS coordinates, and present that out to the hospitals on a large monitor in the [emergency department] so they know, for example, that an ambulance is arriving and it is a priority one and the estimated time of arrival is 10 minutes," Ambulance Victoria manager of enterprise architecture, John Dousset, told IT Pro.
The data comes from Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA), which runs the 000 number. This feed provides 500,000 transactions or “events” every day and includes information such as when an ambulance is dispatched and arrives, along with GPS coordinates of ambulances in motion (every 300 metres) or stationary (every 15 minutes). The information is fed to emergency departments at Monash, Austin, the Northern and St Vincent hospitals.
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Robot ‘legs’ help people walk
- AP
- June 28, 2014
US health regulators have approved a first-of-a-kind set of robotic leg braces that can help some disabled people walk again.
The ReWalk system functions like an exoskeleton for people paralysed from the waist down, allowing them to stand and walk with assistance from a caretaker.
It consists of leg braces with motion sensors and motorised joints that respond to subtle changes in upper-body movement and shifts in balance.
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Apple, Google, Samsung vie to bring blood sugar apps to wearables
Date June 24, 2014 - 8:54AM
Christina Farr
For decades, medical technology firms have searched for ways to let diabetics check blood sugar easily, with scant success. Now, the world's largest mobile technology firms are getting in on the act.
Apple, Samsung and Google, searching for applications that could turn nascent wearable technology like smartwatches and bracelets from curiosities into must-have items, have all set their sights on monitoring blood sugar, several people familiar with the plans say.
These firms are variously hiring medical scientists and engineers, asking US regulators about oversight and developing glucose-measuring features in future wearable devices, the sources said.
The first round of technology may be limited, but eventually the companies could compete in a global blood-sugar tracking market worth over $12 billion by 2017, according to research firm GlobalData.
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Governments' IT projects needn't cost the world. Here's how we can do better
Australia has ambitious targets to improve the relationship between citizens and the government: all correspondence will be able to be conducted online by 2017
Friday 20 June 2014 09.21 EST
The man responsible for the UK government’s technology, Liam Maxwell, walks around with a very simple motto stickered onto his smartphone and Macbook: “What is the user need?”
Maxwell is Her Majesty’s government’s chief technology officer but his outlook, attitude and clothes he wears are far closer to Steve Jobs than to Sir Humphrey.
His job as part of the efficiency reform group – created in 2010 when the UK government was facing its largest deficit since the second world war – is to equip government departments with the right technology to deliver great digital services and to cut IT spending. But it’s more accurate to say his real mission is closer to reimagining the role of government and its daily relationship with citizens.
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In your face: booming biometrics puts security ahead of privacy
Date June 25, 2014
Natasha Singer
The row over covert use of computer face recognition technology was kicked off in 2001 and there's no end in sight, writes Natasha Singer.
Who he? A New York supported at the infamous 2001 "snooper-bowl" final where police used embryonic face-recognition technology on the crowd - and launched a mighty row.
Joseph Atick watched the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Centre in Washington as if he owned the place. In a way, he did. He was an organiser of the event, a conference and trade show for the biometrics security industry. Perhaps more to the point, many of the wares on display, like an airport face-scanning checkpoint, could trace their lineage to his work.
A physicist, Atick is a pioneering entrepreneur of modern face recognition. Having helped advance fundamental face-matching technology in the 1990s, he went into business and promoted the systems to government agencies looking to identify criminals or prevent identity fraud.
‘‘We saved lives,’’ he says. ‘‘We have solved crimes.’’
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Astronauts to build giant telescope
- The Times
- June 23, 2014
SCIENTISTS are planning a space telescope so large it will have to be built by astronaut construction workers because no rocket is capable of lifting it from the Earth in one launch.
The Atlast, or advanced technology large-aperture space telescope, is being designed to take the first direct images of Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars, allowing experts to analyse their atmospheres to see if alien life might have evolved on them.
The challenge of gathering light from such tiny and distant objects will, however, require a mirror measuring up to 16m in diameter — larger than anything of its kind yet built.
This means it would have to be assembled in space more than 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, four times further than the moon.
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Enjoy!
David.