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."

Sunday, August 28, 2016

The New ADHA CEO Speaks At CEDA Session On Integrated Care - A Must Watch Presentation And Q&A.

The ADHA alerted us regarding this presentation during the week.
Here is the announcement:

Tim Kelsey: Digital opportunities in health services

Created on Thursday, 25 August 2016
Australian Digital Health Agency CEO, Tim Kelsey, recently presented to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) on the role of digital in the integration of health services.
Watch the presentation below from the CEDA event:
 The direct link to the relevant page is here:
The associated text is as follows:

About this event

The CEDA 2016 Health services series in Queensland builds on leading thinking and on CEDA's past work analysing sector trends, reform, economic impacts, data driven policy and care service integration.
Locally, nationally and internationally there is a pressing social and economic demand for the design and delivery of efficient, sustainable health services and ever improving health outcomes.
Remarkable reform work is being undertaken with new systems, new technologies and data driven decisions and prioritisation transforming healthcare. There is much still to be done as we work to keep healthcare at the cutting edge of medical science, to ensure health services are convenient, connected, well informed and designed and funded for the future.
This CEDA event was held in Brisbane on 23 August, 2016.
----- End Extract.
First the description of the session really is an overblown fantasy and not related to most of what was said.
Second it was very useful to see Mr Kelsey present and respond to a range of questions.
My impressions were that his presentation reflected an astonishingly optimistic – bordering on the fantastic – view of where we were in eHealth (as reflected in his claim that the myHR was already a success!). Australia has been at this since 1990 and I would argue we are still rather struggling with the basics.
On the positive side he seems to understand just how hard this all can be – which seems rather at odds with a lot of what he said. I also think from his comments (given his short tenure so far) he has yet to grasp just how complicated the various jurisdictions can make things!
I also think he rather downplayed the complexity of stakeholder relationships in e-Health here and may not fully recognise power of the clinician veto that exists in progress in e-Health in Australia (as there are considerable differences between the employment situation of clinicians in Australia and the NHS).
It was also of interest that he noted the Census debacle was likely to have an impact on public confidence in areas like national e-Health.
Of considerable interest – unless I misheard - was the comment that ‘the Agency’ had 300 staff!
Third I think Professor Jackson rather denies the importance of the management of information flows in the delivery of the ‘Medical Home’ as has been widely recognised in the US (where the concept came from). Her comments in Health Information Privacy seemed to be to be a little cavalier.
I would encourage all who have time to watch the 14+ min presentation to form their own views. The 30 min Q&A is also well worth a review!
It makes sense to understand just what Tim sees as top of mind as we can expect those themes to emerge more strongly over the next year or so!
David.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad, superficial, lacking in substance, limited understanding of health, body language a dead giveaway.

Terry Hannan said...

David, I listened to all of this video (no Q&A) and wondered how many times have I heard this presentation by other 'experts' over the last 30+yeras. Admittedly it is early days in his tenure and I suspect that this was a 'motherhood' presentation not requiring significant substance.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Hi Terry,

Hard to disagree, but this one was even more optimistic than previous ones I have heard! The relationship to reality is thus more tenuous!

David.

Anonymous said...

Terry David - I too listened to all of this video and David seemed to be reporting on stuff that I either didn't hear or he was watching something else. And there was definitely no Q&A.

As for wondering how many times has this shallow motherhood stuff been regurgitated (yes - regurgitated is the correct word) over the last 30 years one has to conclude that that is all these people have to say because they don't understand the problem so they can't provide any critical analysis of why nothing has been achieved. At least Clare Jackson was honest (mmmmm) enough to state that nothing had been achieved since the early 1990's. But did anyone understand what that meant?

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

The Q&A is off to the right of the 2 main presentations and goes for 30 mins about.

Have a close look. I was reporting my impression of both discussions.

David.

Dr Ian Colclough said...

Q&A - Richard Royle asked the most pertinent question "What will success of the Health Care Home (HCH) pilots be reliant on - integrated data?"

Clare Jackson saw IT/Integrated Data as an enabler but definitely not the main game. She spoke about the patient and the importance of communication - relationships between the patient and the health care team; all very sensible.

What she omitted to say however was that the HCH will never reach its full potential unless the patient and the care providers are able to use and rely upon integrated data which underpins their capacity to communicate and share information quickly, securely and seamlessly, across and between agencies and providers.

As Claire mentioned in her presentation, we have made so little progress since 1991 in developing an integrated health system despite the expenditure of many millions of dollars, numerous trials and pilots. 1991 was a long time ago!

Reference “Integrating a Nation: health care islands seek national status (healthcover Vol 1 No 1 August 1991)

We cannot delay trialing the HCH until an integrated health system has been developed. Both are vitally important initiatives, dependent one upon the other for realisation of their full potential. The validity of each has yet to be proven.