Here are a few I have come across the last week or so.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
General Comment
Well the festival of the boot is over and it is back to a feed of interesting e-Health news.
Lots happening but a surprising lack of activity – apparently – from the ADHA. I wonder what is in store for October?
We will watch and wait!
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This PHN is going it alone to fix My Health Record's shortcomings
29 September 2017
TECH TALK
If anything could cure a GP of insomnia, it would be putting the words ‘My Health Record’, ‘PHN’ and ‘interoperability’ in the same sentence.
But before you nod off, there’s an exciting point on the way.
How useful would it be if GPs’ computers updated whenever a patient in hospital started a new medication or their test results came through? So, instead of relying on discharge summaries, which are often late, incomplete or both, verified information would be added to your practice software before the patient has even left the ward.
This is the type of thing the My Health Record promised to deliver. But hasn’t. In fact, it barely contains any medication details or test results.
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Northern Territory Police Special References Unit investigating Health Department matter
MATT GARRICK, NT News
September 25, 2017 12:30am
A CASE involving the Health Department’s chief information officer has been referred to the police, the NT News can reveal.
Stephen Moo resigned this month, with secrecy surrounding the circumstances of his abrupt departure.
Mr Moo, a career public servant, was in charge of overseeing of a major new $259 million IT rollout.
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Matter involving former NT health CIO referred to police
NT Department of Health confirms CIO’s departure
27 September, 2017 09:13
The NT Police has confirmed that it is assessing a matter that involves the former chief information officer of the Northern Territory Department of Health, Stephen Moo.
“The Northern Territory Police have received a referral from the Department of Health,” a police spokesperson told Computerworld.
“That referral is currently subject to assessment and no further information is available at this time.”
“Mr Moo has resigned his position with the Department of Health, this has ceased his association with the Department,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health said.
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Govt reveals data breach notification format
By Ry Crozier on Sep 29, 2017 6:45AM
Will use it to collect and publish stats.
The government has finally revealed a draft of the statement it expects organisations to file if they suffer a data breach after February 22 of next year.
Under data breach notification laws passed in mid-February of this year, organisations that suffer a data breach will need to notify the Australian Information Commissioner and affected customers "as soon as practicable".
They must also assess its severity and the potential harm to those impacted, and may need to file a formal report.
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Privacy Commissioner publishes data breach notification guidelines for comment
The Office of the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner has published draft resources for the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, asking for public comment.
The Office of the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner (OAIC) is seeking public comment on draft resources it has published relating to Australia's impending data breach notification laws.
The draft resources include guidelines on how to prepare an eligible data breach statement for when the scheme takes effect on February 22, 2017, how to assess a suspected breach, what quantifies reporting, how to notify the OAIC of an incident, and exceptions under the legislated obligations.
The new laws mandated under the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act require organisations covered by the Australian Privacy Act 1988 to notify any individuals likely to be at risk of serious harm by a data breach.
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Australian health IT sage looks back to the future and sees what went wrong
Natasha Hancock | 29 Sep 2017
He’s a visionary in the field whose seminal 2004 BMJ paper predicted the ways healthcare would be transformed by technology, but as we approach his 2020 deadline Professor Enrico Coiera says companies have held back progress and patients are still being put at risk.
It must have seemed such a long way away, but Coiera boldly foretold the future when he described a 2020 in which technology was assimilated into clinical practice.
“The world may be such that as a clinician you work in flexible virtual teams and some of your colleagues are computers. You would of course instinctively mistrust clinicians who always know the answer without consulting the information grid, and patients often choose to be the team leader,” Coiera, now Foundation Professor in Medical Informatics at Macquarie University and Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, wrote in 2004.
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Online appointments for patients too busy to see medics
ANNABEL HENNESSY, The Daily Telegraph
September 30, 2017 12:00am
SYDNEYSIDERS are so stressed and overworked they can’t even see their psychologist in person.
Top clinicians are now seeing up to half of their patients through Skype or Facetime because they’re too busy to make it to appointments.
Other psychologists are setting up “virtual clinics” inside online games. In some cases, people are being counselled under the guise of their game characters.
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Australia’s largest health district to use Patientrack e-obs
Shireen Khalil
27 September 2017
Australia’s largest local health district (LHD) is to use the e-observations platform from UK-based Patientrack to collect and analyse vital signs data.
Hunter New England Health – which provides a range of public health services to the Hunter, New England and Lower Mid North Coast regions – will implement Patientrack in more than 43 sites in the district.
Patientrack is an e-observations technology allowing clinicians to record vital signs on mobile devices rather than onto paper charts. The software automatically calculates a patient’s early warning score, and alerts relevant clinicians if there is cause for concern.
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Real-time monitoring validated in latest Guild figures
9 million transactions recorded since MedsASSIST was first introduced
29th September 2017
MedsASSIST has helped slash OTC codeine sales by 27% since its introduction, Pharmacy Guild figures suggest.
And the number of people seeking to buy OTC products containing codeine has dropped by nearly a quarter, the Guild says.
It was believed the increased checks through real-time monitoring had discouraged some people from inappropriately seeking codeine products, a spokesperson said.
“This suggests real-time monitoring has a deterrent factor in relation to inappropriate requests.
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- Sep 25 2017 at 10:00 AM
CancerAid joins Cedars-Sinai Techstars accelerator
Sydney-based medtech start-up CancerAid has become the first Australian start-up to be accepted into the prestigious Cedars-Sinai accelerator, powered by Techstars, in the US.
The company provides support for cancer patients, their carers and clinicians through an app which lets them store all their diagnostic information in one place, access trustworthy treatment information and a journal to track and manage symptoms, medications and their effectiveness.
The acceptance into the medtech accelerator follows an expansion to the US, which has seen the bulk of the management team relocate to Los Angeles, although the company's headquarter's remains in Sydney.
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Geoff Rohrsheim wins South Australia’s 2017 Pearcey Award
QLD and NSW Tech Entrepreneur of the Year Award winners still to be decided
The Pearcey Foundation today announced the winner of the 2017 South Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award. The award was presented to Kloud Solutions co-founder Geoff Rohrsheim at an Australian Computer Society (ACS) Leaders luncheon held on Wednesday 20 September in Adelaide.
In announcing the award, Rick Harvey, Head Judge of the Pearcey Foundation, noted that Rohrsheim is an outstanding serial entrepreneur demonstrating his innovative skills not just in South Australia, but also nationally and internationally. “The Pearcey Award is more than just for success, as it is also for peer recognition by other outstanding Australian entrepreneurs who have taken a risk, made a difference and are an inspiration to others,” said Mr Harvey.
Apart from revealing the winner of the SA Pearcey Award, the ACS event highlight was a presentation from the City of Adelaide’s Chief Information Officer, Peter Auhl, on the importance of the Ten Gigabit City network. Mr Auhl was then joined by a panel of government and industry leaders to discuss the benefits of the network to the South Australian economy.
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New governance framework to unify oversight of the design of eHealth NSW’s digital healthcare solutions
A trial of the model is underway, with a “prototype” Design Working Group being formed to guide the development of an End-of-Life Management solution in core NSW electronic medical records.
26/09/2017
A new Clinical Solutions Design Governance Framework is being introduced in the state of New South Wales in Australia to bring together oversight of the design of all of eHealth NSW’s digital healthcare solutions.
eHealth NSW provides statewide leadership on the shape, delivery and management of ICT-led healthcare. It is responsible for setting eHealth strategy, policy and standards, and works with Local Health Districts (LHDs) and Health Agencies to implement statewide core systems and ensure compliance with statewide standards.
The model will ensure for the first time that every group working on the design of digital clinical solutions within eHealth NSW will have consistent governance and support. It will also guarantee that core principles such as Human Centred Design are embedded in all clinical tools.
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Is the Commonwealth getting $10b worth of value from its IT procurement spend?
There is a long way to go before we can be confident that we are getting bang for our buck in regards to government IT investment, argues ITPA president Robert Hudson
25 September, 2017 10:13
Opinion — Effective investment by the Commonwealth in IT infrastructure, solutions and people is more important now than ever before. Unfortunately, the government’s track-record on IT spending is not good and, in our opinion, should come under greater scrutiny as this budget line item continues to grow.
According to a recent report on Commonwealth IT investment in this country, procurement is an area that should be of great concern to IT professionals and the industry.
We are not doing it well. Agencies are frightened to make decisions because of the lack of framework and paucity of skills and knowledge. Suppliers often find it too hard to deal with agencies and so steer clear or appear to go out of their way to take advantage of the confusion and pitch overpriced solutions that won't deliver what's required, all with no fear of penalty.
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New Boss For The Health Department
28 Sep 2017
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has appointed career public servant Glenys Beauchamp the new Secretary of the Department of Health.
She took up the post on September 18, following the resignation of former Health Department chief Martin Bowles.
Ms Beauchamp has had an extensive senior-level career in the Australian Public Service and was most recently the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Secretary.
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Celo, Vensa and Orion Health named NZHIT award finalists
Monday, 25 September 2017, 9:18 am
Press Release: Make Lemonade
Press Release: Make Lemonade
Celo, Vensa and Orion Health named NZHIT award finalists
September 25, 2017
Cutting-edge, lifechanging e-health companies Celo, Vensa and Orion Health have been named finalists in the New Zealand Health IT (NZHIT) annual innovation awards.
The winner will be announced at the HiNZ conference awards in Rotorua on November 5.
“For the second year in a row we received extremely strong entries and the judging panel found it difficult to determine the final three entries,” NZ Health IT chief executive Scott Arrol says.
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Robotic prostatectomy patients are now older, higher-risk
The technique has fallen out of favour for younger men with low-grade disease.
27th September 2017
Robotic prostate surgery has fallen out of favour for younger men with low-grade disease, Victorian urological surgeons say.
Practice patterns for six surgeons performing high volumes of robotic prostate surgery show that they are now operating more on older men with higher-risk disease compared with a decade ago.
In the review that covered surgeries performed on 3075 men, the average age of patients increased from 61 to 65 between 2004 and 2016.
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In search of a tech solution to poor drug compliance
28 September 2017
TECH TALK
Surely in this day and age there’s a fancy tech solution to the age-old problem of people not taking their medications?
Enter stage left the smart pill bottle, a medication container that glows or makes a noise if a patient fails to open it to take their pills at the prescribed time.
Such smart pill bottles, which are already on the market, are also programmed to send alerts to friends or family if patients miss their meds for two out of three days.
That’s brilliant, but what if we made them even more effective by adding a behavioural incentive for patients too, like a financial reward?
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#FHIR Product Director’s Report from San Diego meeting
Posted on September 21, 2017 by Grahame Grieve
See here. (Notification for followers of this blog)
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SNOMED CT AU and Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) September 2017 Release
The National Clinical Terminology Service (NCTS) is pleased to announce that the September combined release of SNOMED CT®‑AU[1] and the Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) is now available to registered users from the NCTS website.
The combined RF2 release files are available as Full, Snapshot and Delta, in addition to the traditional combined release bundle (labelled "ALL"). To download the RF2 files, select SNOMED CT-AU > Release Bundles from the ACCESS tab.
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Coordinating the NDIS and the health care system
Authored by Jodie Bailie
I RECENTLY attended the Primary Health Care Research and Information Service conference in Brisbane, and was surprised that at Australia’s premier forum on primary health care (PHC) there was not one presentation on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and the impact of its rollout on the health system.
Australia is experiencing an unprecedented, once-in-a-lifetime, national reform with the implementation of the NDIS, yet at this conference there was no reference to it at all. We heard about the Health Care Homes initiative, which is also undoubtedly a major reform (although not on the scale of the NDIS), but there was no critical analysis of the intersections between the PHC system, Health Care Homes and the NDIS.
I understand that the NDIS is not a health scheme, and that in fact it specifically excludes health conditions; yet there are clear intersections with the health system at many points, particularly with its provision of funding for the support, services and equipment that people with disability require to meet their functional needs. I wonder why, more generally, there is such a dearth of research on, and critical analysis of, the effects of the NDIS on the health system. After all, coordination between the NDIS and the health system is required at all levels if we are to see improved health outcomes and quality of life.
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The can-do tech millionaires now believe they can defy death
Technology is being turned to its greatest challenge — to make humankind immortal.
- Mark Bridge
- The Times
- 12:00AM September 25, 2017
They have made billions by the age of 30, their apps and ads are global phenomena and they believe we’ll see computer-augmented brains and 4000km/h trains by 2030. In Silicon Valley you have to think big and believe anything’s possible. Mark Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old Facebook co-founder, has donated $US3 billion ($3.8bn) to “cure all diseases” by the end of the century. Others go farther, arguing that ageing is reversible and youthful immortality is within reach.
Larry Ellison, the 73-year-old co-founder of Oracle, told his biographer, “Death has never made any sense to me,” viewing the Grim Reaper as another corporate rival to be outfoxed. And so Ellison and his peers are investing in start-ups that promise to use technology and data to make 100 the new 40. And ordinary Valley workers, who already pop pills to work through the night and network at kitesurfing events, are joining their superiors in “biohacking” their bodies.
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Medical 3D printing saving soles, one at a time
Drew Turney
Published: September 27 2017 - 11:45PM
After years of funny desk toys, one of the areas 3D printing might be set to transform is medical devices.
After years of funny desk toys, one of the areas 3D printing might be set to transform is medical devices.
While some treatment and disability tools, such as wheelchairs, have a one-size-fits-all nature, many are personal to the individual needs of the user or their carers, and it's a tricky balance to manufacture them in small enough numbers to be cost effective for both manufacturers and patients.
That's where 3D printing comes in – digitally scanning a user's unique body profile and building the solution on a one-off basis faster and cheaper than a factory tooled up for mass manufacture.
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Australia needs to step up on AI
- The Australian
- 7:43AM September 28, 2017
David Swan
The federal government must step up and contribute to global standards on AI and automation or risk getting left behind, according to Labor’s shadow minister for the digital economy Ed Husic.
Earlier this year the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Risks Report 2017 which identified AI as a key risk, while tech luminary Elon Musk — who is in Adelaide this week at the International Astronautical Congress — warned it would be AI, not North Korea, which will start World War 3.
Mr Husic told The Australian the world needed to start cementing boundaries to prevent catastrophe, and could use leadership from a country like Australia.
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Every Advanced Google Search Operator & Command You Need to Know
When it comes to SEO, there are many tools that can help you research opportunities. Tools of the trade can run the gamut from link research to on-page optimization to tools for performing SEO audits.
Advanced Google search operators have their place in this ecosystem of tools, however. These operators can help you gain insight into SEO opportunities and audit points you otherwise would not have identified as a result; the possibilities are endless.
After we talk about the advanced operators and search commands, I will also provide several examples of how these operators can be used in the real world. From content research to technical SEO audits, these examples will help you become more familiar with how Google’s advanced search commands and operators work in real-world situations.
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CRISPR: How will it change our lives?
Global September 20 2017
CRISPR One giant breakthrough; a mass of complexities
The discovery and successful harnessing of the gene editing technology, CRISPR, promises to be one of the most significant breakthroughs of our age. But a complex series of hurdles - legal, technical, commercial, regulatory and ethical - must be leapt to safely realise its vast potential.
The trajectory of scientific discovery often follows a similar pattern, with years of slow progress within individual disciplines suddenly giving way to a moment of extraordinary breakthrough and a giant leap forward.
The discovery and successful harnessing of the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) system looks to be one of those step-change moments, particularly in its application in the field of gene editing. It promises to be of massive importance, not just in the treatment of genetic disorders, but in drug development, animal health, crop science and across the bio-industrial sector.
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https://www.itwire.com/open-sauce/80065-nbn-co-s-annual-results-another-effort-to-polish-a-turd.html
NBN Co's annual results: another effort to polish a turd
- 25 September 2017
- Written by Sam Varghese
How does one describe the annual results from NBN Co, a company that loses $4.24 billion and then announces that it "delivered strong financial results, exceeding key targets set by the board?"
And how does one react when that same company sends out those results on Friday afternoon, ensuring that only the very stoic will be able to comb through the 172 pages of verbiage in order to compile a report?
Australia, fortunately, has many an apt phrase to cut through BS of this kind; what NBN Co has done is best described as a supreme effort to polish a turd.
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Monash Children's Hospital takes patients underwater for injections
Thursday 28 September 2017 9:26AM (view full episode)
Remember all those years ago when the National Broadband Network shone like a beacon of hope?
As tarnished as that beacon may have become, it's promise to deliver real time e-health surgery to patients in need in regional Australia has taken a step forward inside the newly opened Monash Children's Hospital.
The hospital is the most advanced in the southern hemisphere when it comes to surgery simulation and training, and its even trialling the use of virtual technology in helping children overcome the trauma of needle injection, with some extraordinary results.
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NBN inquiry calls for more fibre, independent audit
Report calls for more FTTC
29 September, 2017 15:29
A parliamentary inquiry into the rollout of the NBN has called on the government to ensure complete that as much as possible of the remaining fixed-line network is completed using fibre to the curb (FTTC) or fibre to the premises (FTTP).
The first report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network was tabled today. Its conclusions include that that much of fibre to the network (FTTN) infrastructure deployed so far as part of the rollout “will likely need to be substantially upgraded in the short term”.
“All the evidence strongly suggests that speed and data requirements of Australian households and business will continue to grow rapidly,” the report states.
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Enjoy!
David.
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