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, May 26, 2019

It Seems When Given The Choice Sensible Planners Move Away From Centralised National EHRs.

This appeared a few days ago.

National Health Information Platform replaces Electronic Health Record

Tuesday, 21 May 2019  
eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
 The Ministry of Health is going to Cabinet this June to get approval to develop a detailed business case for a national Health Information Platform.
 The Ministry has moved away from the idea of building a single Electronic Health Record, towards developing a national HIP that will enable data about a single patient to be shared, says deputy director data and digital Shayne Hunter.
Hunter was a keynote speaker at the Emerging Tech in Health conference in Christchurch on 21 May.
“We are moving beyond the agenda of ‘we will drive for a single EHR in a physical sense’,” he told attendees.
Rather, the Ministry is focusing on joining up data services to provide information about a patient via a national Health Information Platform.
“This is intended to be not just a technical platform, but a range of other components to enable us to support better information sharing across the sector,” he said.
The plan to build a national EHR was expected to take three to five years when first announced by government at the HiNZ 2015 conference.
An indicative business case was developed and presented to the Cabinet Committee on State Sector Reform and Expenditure Control in July 2017. 
The committee requested further information on the costs and benefits of an EHR and these were expected to go back to Cabinet for approval in December 2017, but the Ministry has since re-focused its efforts on building a business case for a nHIP.
Ministry group manager digital strategy and investment Darren Douglass told eHealthNews.nz that interoperability is core to the new platform, which will “have the ability to assemble a virtual electronic record on an ‘as required’ basis from multiple trusted sources, and provide access to data and services”.
The nHIP will be a key enabler for real-time clinical decision support, empowering patients to self-manage their health and wellbeing and data driven healthcare, he explains.
The Ministry is planning a phased approach to implementation with investment in tranches and avoiding ‘lock in’ to a single technology solution. 
The full article is here:
The My Health Record is, as everyone who reads know, is an architecturally flawed solution to an ill-defined set of problems. The data it contains is inevitably hard to search, non-current, incomplete, clinically risky and difficult, if not impossible, to properly synchronise with live systems. It is also flawed as a data source for both clinical decision support and health services planning.
Worse if is inevitably insecure and exposed to a real, non-zero risk of a catastrophic data breach!
NZ has been smart not to go down this path and the ADHA should be planning migration to a better designed distributed system ASAP. Australia really needs to ‘bite the bullet’ on this and sooner rather than later.
Maybe with a new Government – sorry I fear I am dreaming…..
David.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

But David you forget it is not about healthcare of patient choice, it is a crusade against the "fax" and probably a few insecurities developed during childhood.

There is really nothing Canberra can do, they are stuck with a white mammoth, depleted influence in all settings.

Anonymous said...

Innovation and disruption happens everywhere all the time except in the small corner we’re the ADHA squats.

Andrew McIntyre said...

Making health data shareable, by supporting standards compliance strictly (Whatever standard you are using) and the development of agreed clinical models and terminology is the key. This is the primary building block of useful eHealth systems. With standard reliable building blocks you can stand back in amazement at people will build. Houses are all built with standardized building materials assembled in a myriad of interesting ways. The MyHR is like trying to carve a house out of a single block of stone.