This appeared a few days ago:
One in five Australians not online: Broadband Commission
Australia excels on mobile broadband but lags on fixed
Adam Bender (Computerworld) on 25 September, 2014 11:04
Australia has ranked 21st in the world on Internet access, with 83 per cent of its people using the Internet, according to an annual report released by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.
The commission was set up in May 2010 by the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The ITU and OECD has defined broadband as a capacity of at least 256 kbps in the uplink or downlink speed.
Australia is one of 77 countries with more than half of their populations online, up from 70 in 2013, it said. The top ten countries for Internet use are all located in Europe. Iceland is ranked first in the world with 96.5 per cent of people online.
Overall, about 40 per cent of the world’s people are online, the report found. There will be 2.9 billion online by the end of 2014, up from 2.3 billion in the 2013, it said.
The Broadband Commission predicted that half of the world’s population will have Internet access in three years.
Australia trailed 31 other countries on fixed broadband, with 25 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.
Monaco leads the world in fixed broadband penetration, covering more than 44 per cent of the population. Monaco, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands are the only four economies in which fixed broadband penetration exceeds 40 per cent.
While Australia lagged on fixed broadband, the country finished fourth for mobile broadband penetration, with 110.5 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. Australia trailed only Singapore (135.1), Finland (123.5) and Japan (120.5) on this metric.
There are many more details here:
The important figure is that there are 17% of the population who are not at all connected (mobile or fixed). Just how they are to be included in any new e-Health strategies is clearly an issue.
Given many of these people are likely to be just those who should be involved in improved care co-ordination and improved involvement in their own care clearly a good idea or two are needed.
Any ideas?
David.
2 comments:
David,
Can I suggest that it's only a problem if the focus of eHealth is on the patient having his/her own access to, and control of, health records.
I'd be very surprised if there are any health professionals who don't have broadband access (maybe the FDS?) to the internet and/or their support systems.
It only becomes a problem when they try and put the patient at the centre of health records i.e. "Personally Controlled".
And they've sort of fixed that by allowing patients to create their EHR by means other than the Internet. It wouldn't be easy to Personally Control it, but it would exist.
Considering that about 6% of people are under 5 years and another approx 6% are over 80 I don't think 5% of people 5 to 80 not online is too bad.
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