Last week we saw these announcements about all the new users that were to be connected to the myHR.
See here:
Chemist Warehouse and Corum connecting to My Health Record
Friday, 24 November 2017
Every Australian with a My Health Record will be able to walk into a community pharmacy and have their Pharmacist upload important medicines information into their secure My Health Record to improve their health care.
Chemist Warehouse, representing 30 per cent of the community pharmacy market, and Corum representing 1,000 pharmacies, today announced their upcoming connection to My Health Record system in 2018. Every community pharmacy software vendor has now signed up to the Community Pharmacy Software Industry Partnership to connect to the My Health Record system.
Chemist Warehouse Managing Partner and Director Mark Finocchiaro said the company sees great potential to improve the health of Australians through technologies such as My Health Record.
More here:
And here:
Major boost to diagnostic imaging access with 16 software companies signing onto My Health Record
Thursday, 23 November 2017
More than 95 per cent of Australian diagnostic imaging practices will soon be able to connect to the My Health Record system with 16 new software companies finalising service agreements with the Australian Digital Health Agency.
Over the coming months software companies will build My Health Record connectivity into their systems. By the end of 2018, less than twelve months after offering arrangements, diagnostic imaging centres will be able to access software that connects with My Health Record and to upload reports for their patients.
Demand from patients for a secure on-line summary of their health information is gathering momentum. Over 5.3 million Australians have a My Health Record and a new record is created every 38 seconds.
More here:
However on the less positive side we found this:
GPs and hospitals claim My Health Record is not fit for purpose as alarmingly low usage figures are released
Lynne Minion | 21 Nov 2017
It’s cost an estimated $2 billion and taken five years to develop so far, but concerns are growing that the Federal Government’s My Health Record may be at risk of becoming a white elephant as hospital and GP groups claim it is yet to show clinical benefit.
New figures released by the Australian Digital Health Agency, which is rolling out the national repository for health information, show that while 21 per cent of the population has a My Health Record, only 263 specialists were connected to the system, less than 150 hospital discharge summaries are viewed each month by any healthcare organisation, and about 200 GP-generated shared health summaries were accessed by staff working in public and private hospitals in August.
The alarmingly low use of the system by clinicians has amplified the chorus of concerns from healthcare providers and technology experts who claim the My Health Record isn’t fit for purpose.
GPs, who are provided with financial incentives to upload shared health summaries to the system through the government’s ePIP program, said they don’t need to access My Health Record for up-to-date and accurate clinical information.
Lots more here:
This seems to show that hardly anyone is using it and this also:
Privacy groups outraged over failure to inform Aussies about a new government health record
Sue Dunlevy, National Health Reporter, News Corp Australia Network
PRIVACY groups have slammed the Federal Government for their silence over a controversial internet health record forced on every Australian as of next year.
More than $1.7 billion of taxpayer’s money has gone into developing a personalised My Health Record for every Australian.
It will detail every subsidised medicine used, every doctor and hospital visit, blood test result, X-ray and scan ever provided to each person.
People who want to opt out of the system to keep private sensitive information like abortions, sexually transmitted disease, mental illness, obesity surgery will have three months to do so.
But privacy groups are gobsmacked by the government’s decision not to use TV, radio or newspaper ads to explain this to the public.
If you fail to opt out within the three-month deadline, the government will automatically create the record for you — and it will be kept for 130 years.
Lots more here:
and even this:
There's a glimmer of hope for My Health Record, but the clock is ticking
22 November 2017
COMMENT
You would worry for the My Health Record this Christmas — simply because it still has the look of a giant, overfed turkey. Respect to the Australian Digital Health Agency — it was open and transparent about what’s been going on.
It could have buried the numbers as politicians have often done beneath the statistical irrelevancies of the millions of patients signed up to the system, that number so quoted in the media sound bites when pretending taxpayers dollars are not being squandered.
The shared health summaries being created by GPs are meant to be the “backbone” of the system, a quick, concise clinical overview that hospitals, private specialists, allied health practitioners can refer to when providing care.
Lots more here:
So in summary were are all going to be enrolled in a system which we may, or may not be informed of, to gather all our health information willy nilly. Information will be added to this record without our knowledge and we can’t delete it – even if we really want to. Basically no on except the Government is likely to be using the information and we are all footing a huge bill to fund it!
You could not make this stuff up! They really have wandered off the reservation!
David.
10 comments:
David, it seems to me that if all the pharmacy and imaging vendors and soon the pathology vendors have agreed to send all their prescriptions and imaging and pathology reports to the MyHR then whether you like it or not one must conclude (a) it is here to stay, (b) there is no room for other alternative systems. Presumably all these vendors are being paid to connect. Oh, BTW, the MSIA represents the software vendors and they seem to wax lyrical about the MyHR at every opportunity. So it can't be all that bad.
Respect to the Australian Digital Health Agency — it was open and transparent about what’s been going on.
It could have buried the numbers as politicians have often done beneath the statistical irrelevancies of the millions of patients signed up to the system, that number so quoted in the media sound bites when pretending taxpayers dollars are not being squandered.
I would like to think that is the case, however evidence would suggest it might be as simple as no one in the ADHA knows what the numbers mean l.
@5:43 PM "it might be as simple as no one in the ADHA knows what the numbers mean".
Perhaps you're right but that doesn't really matter.
If as 5:26 PM says "the MSIA is waxing lyrical at every opportunity" then politicians including COAG have to believe all is well and on track leading them to conclude that "it can't be all that bad".
If everyone is sending everything to everyone and everyone is sending everything to the GovHR will we not end up with a lot of duplication? Or are we creating a business case for AI, seems to me the volume of data and duplication is going to need machines we have not yet created.
@7:46 PM It' a lot less complicated that that. Basically the intention is that everything that is approved for sending to the patient's doctor will also be simultaneously sent to the MyHR. So the MyHR will be a copy of what is in the doctor's file and also include what is in any other doctor's file who might also be treating / investigating that particular patient. Another way of looking at it is the MyHR equates to the sum of every file held on every patient by every doctor.
Its "Back to the future really" 20 years ago we had PIT reports going into PMS systems but they were non atomic and not suitable for any decision support. They did display quite well however and GPs still like the PIT version for display. So health connect was born to show us what government was capable of? Some help, yeah?? They scoffed at what technology was working (PIT and HL7V2 with atomic data) and were gunna, gunna invent their own.
20 years later we have PDF reports in MyEHR which allow all sorts of fonts and logos and inconsistent display and they are somewhere between 50 and 1000 times the size and memory/disc/bandwidth usage. No atomic data however. mmm what happened?
After $2 Billion is this really progress? I hope they have designed the system for scale, perhaps another power station is a good idea? GPs will really enjoy flicking through 200 slow to load PDFs with no decision support.
If the criteria for success is the amount of data uploaded, then ADHA and the government can claim a win. Especially when the majority of the data is uploaded by the government.
If the criteria is the usefulness of the data - as evidenced by the number of times data is downloaded and used in a meaningful way in the course of health care, then that's a whole different measure.
There is not much the ADHA can do to encourage doctors and specialists to use the system if there is no benefit to these groups. There's very little evidence of benefit to anyone but the government.
There maybe no benefits of using the thing but there are dis-benefits in not playing the game. A easy test for the systems value is to pull the insentives from software vendors and participants. If it is a strong and sustainable model then removing financial incentives would result in little or no impact on current activities.
I am sure that theme will be woven throughout the Interoperability thing, artificial models are just that
8:36 AM. That is a very reasonable suggestion. If it cannot stand on its own two feet and create an innovative and job creating market place around itself then it is probably not worth having. You suggestion should be taken seriously as the funding has to be cut back and allocated to other priorities sooner or later, now would seem as good a time as ever.
perhaps someone should check what's being faxed on those ancient fax machines, and put that up in the myEHR.
noone gets incentives for sending faxes.
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