Spotted this a few days ago.
Here is the full page:
Our Work
eHealth Reference Platform
The eHealth Reference Platform is a clinically validated technical simulator for eHealth, with technical services and sample code supporting demonstration, training and development testing.
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Link is here:
This is really one of the funniest pages I have seen in a good while and just typifies the old and failed NEHTA mindset. User understanding, not technology, is what is needed to e-Health to ever work.
There is a prize available for the first person to explain just how you clinically validate a technical e-Health simulator.
It is this sort of focus and direction of effort by NEHTA that confirms NEHTA has its priorities all wrong.
Just why exactly does a content-less page like this exist?
The sooner they are ‘dissolved’ and transferred to a more useful clinically and consumer orientated entity the better as far as I am concerned.
David.
Another bunker burmaster cappuccino special!
ReplyDeleteSurely they have just inadvertently overlooked providing a link to all the meaningful documentation and demonstration simulation to which they refer.
ReplyDeleteYou are dreaming again Ian!
ReplyDeleteDavid.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteMay it's moved to http://www.nehta.gov.au/our-work/ehealth-reference-platform
ReplyDelete~~~~ Tim C
Thanks for the links, looks like a fair effort from Steve Burmester
ReplyDelete"Thanks for the links, looks like a fair effort from Steve Burmester"
ReplyDeleteThose cappuccinos didn't go to waste!
It's good to see others checking their facts first by keeping an open mind and giving the benefit of the doubt before going off half cocked. Don't you agree David?
ReplyDeleteI am quite content the link I provided is still current and still content free.
ReplyDeleteI am also grateful that the apparently correct link was so promptly identified (via Tim C) - so everyone can find what they need - if indeed they find it useful.
I still am not sure just where clinical validation fits?
David.
"I still am not sure just where clinical validation fits?"
ReplyDeleteNehta architecture is holding am urgent coffee fuelled conference meeting now to respond ASAP.
"Validation" presumably means some form of quantifiable, repeatable test that directly measures the phenomenon in question.
ReplyDeleteSo for an architecture to be clinically validated it would mean that we have tested the architecture to gauge whether it meets some benchmark for clinical use. It also means that we should be able to compare one architecture against another and decide which is better.
Now since an architecture is not an end user system, we also presume I guess that the validation either 1/ did not actually test anything in the clinical world or 2/ relied on addition layers of software such as a GP desk top system for the test.
If it was 1 - then it was not clinically validated was it? If it was 2 - then it is hard to apportion success when errors at the architecture level can be fixed higher up and vice versa. When measuring two subsystems that both contribute to one outcome you cannot attribute the entire outcome to one or the other without addition information.
If there was no comparison of one architecture against another then we also don't know whether any measurement is good or bad with respect to the architecture, as there is no gold standard to inform us.
So I am really looking forward to the release of the validation study methods and results, as it will no doubt be a ground-breaking piece of informatics science.
Or am I perhaps just another uniformed critic who refuses to hop onto the success train that is the PCEHR ...
Mr More, I'll restrain from adhominem attacks on you but a good majority of of your posts on here come across as sound very childish.
ReplyDeleteOn this page for instance you don't have enough knowledge of Nehta to even get a Nehta employee's name correct.
It seems somewhat disingenuous of you to comment on things that you appear to be so ill-informed on.
It's fair to complain about something but unless you can suggest a better alternative or an improvement on it then you come across as sounding like a petulant child with nothing positive to offer.
I have not mentioned anyone at all here - others have.
ReplyDeleteIf you are so well informed perhaps - for the benefit of all you can explain what it means to "clinically validate a technical e-Health simulator"?
No one reading here seems to know.
David.
re "It's fair to complain about something but unless you can suggest a better alternative or an improvement on it then you come across as sounding like a petulant child with nothing positive to offer."
ReplyDeleteI won't be defending David More, he's quite capable of looking after himself.
However, I can only assume that this commenter hasn't been reading this blog very much - or else (s)he only reads what David writes.
So at the risk of repeating myself too much....
A better alternative is an Information System, not a bunch of technology solutions.
The supposed PECHR available here:
http://www.nehta.gov.au/implementation-resources/ehealth-foundations/pcehr-architecture is a joke. Section 3.2 "Logical Information Viewpoint" gives the impression that Information requirements have been covered, but in reality, it's a shallow treatment with huge gaps.
Rule number one in any information system description is to define the data. For that you need, as a minimum, Conceptual and Logical, Entity Relationship Diagrams and Data Flow Diagrams.
There's not a single data flow diagram in the whole document. What entity relationship diagrams there are are woefully inadequate.
While I'm at it - here's a rather important improvement on this so-called architecture document - identify and determine the Non Functional Requirements for the system.
Rule number two in any information system description is to define the NFRs. Things like availability, response times, DR, Audit and Control, Maintainability, Accessibility, Resilience Scalability, Supportability. Some of these things get a mention but they are not properly defined.
Considering that rules 1 and 2 in Information System architecture development have been broken, here's my suggestion - Get some proper architects, start again and do it properly.
And if you think I'm being negative, I'll try and be a bit more positive - I'm positive the PCEHR architecture is a load of rubbish.
I have pondered this statement - Para 3 first page of the eHealth Reference Platform - long enough.
ReplyDeleteIt tells me nothing. It is garbled strangled English.
It says:
The eHealth system in Australia is now operational. A single referencable and integrated solution is now required that spans demonstration, testing and training, and support services. This system must suitably reflect the key eHealth systems in Australia, and support the integration new eHealth capabilities with current real world clinical practice.
Pray someone please tell me - what are these people trying to say?
OK I'll have a go at deconstruction and interpretation in the style of fact checker (yes I should be doing something else and I am avoiding it)
ReplyDelete"The eHealth system in Australia is now operational."
This sentence should probably read: "The PCEHR in Australia is now operational."
There are multiple clinical information systems operating independently and these have been available at local primary care level, in hospitals, even across states, and have been so for many years. They have not just turned on because of the PCEHR. I am not even going to start exploring the semantics behind 'operational' as being tuned on does not mean anything useful is happening.
Verdict. False.
" A single referencable and integrated solution is now required that spans demonstration, testing and training, and support services. "
Amazingly this suggest that having created an operational PCEHR they only now realise that they forgot about training, testing, and generally helping others to integrate with it. So now its time to do something about that.
Since they are IT people the answer is more software. Since they are architecture people and not implementers of real world systems they specify an overly ambitious singular solution where probably something more pragmatic would get 90% of the job done for 10% of the price.
If these services were ever required they should have been considered from day 1.
Verdict. Too much, to late.
"This system must suitably reflect the key eHealth systems in Australia,
Internal logical inconsistency. There was no other eHealht system in sentence one, now there are many.
Verdict. Tautology.
"and support the integration new eHealth capabilities "
Apart from a missing "of" in the sentence, it seems to suggest that the PCEHR is delivering new capabilities. That's probably right - there are no lots of new documents available that would have had to be obtained from individual clinical systems int he past, and the summary record is a new creation. Verdict. True.
" ...with current real world clinical practice."
I thought the point was to support "demonstration, testing and training, and support services. " Is this demonstrator,/simulator integrating with real world systems? Probably not.
Verdict: I have no idea what you are talking about but it sure would look good in a Powerpoint slide deck flicked through very quickly in front of some bureaucrats who think Java is the name of a coffee chain.
The logical conclusion from the last two posts is that the people producing documentation and promotional material cannot write clear English.
ReplyDeleteThe third para referred to is not a one-off. Basically people who don't understand the problem are describing how they have solved the problem in a language which no one could hope to comprehend.
This proves what David and others have been saying for a very long time - terminate NEHTA, go back to first base - start again.
NEHTA doesn't have to look too far to identify and understand the error of their ways:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm