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
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We are in full ‘silly season’ and there is very little news to report for the week. What I have found follows. Enjoy!
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Labor criticises Government decision to launch health website without promised feature
By political reporter Stephanie Dalzell
December 30, 2019
A Government website set up in response to concerns about out-of-pocket health costs has gone live without key promised features, like the ability for patients to search and compare specialist fees.
Key points:
- The Morrison Government promised the website would list fees of individual specialists but the site launched today without that function
- Labor says the site is not good enough and represents a broken promise from the Government
- But Health Minister Greg Hunt says the website will be expanded to include the feature next year
The site can be used to search predicted out-of-pocket costs for in-hospital treatments delivered in the private sector.
Ahead of the election, the Morrison Government pledged to create the site, saying it would list the fees of individual specialists to help avoid so-called "bill shock" and crack down on doctors who charged exorbitant fees.
At the time, there were concerns some specialists were price-gouging, with reports of patients resorting to GoFundMe campaigns to raise tens of thousands of dollars for medical procedures.
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December 30, 2019 8:26 am AEDT
New website to improve consumer understanding of medical costs
The Morrison Government has taken action to reduce the effects of ‘bill shock’ from unexpected out-of-pocket medical expenses.
A new Medical Costs Transparency website will – for the first time – show Australian patients typical out-of-pocket costs for common treatments and procedures in the private system.
Australian patients will be able to search and compare predicted out-of-pocket costs for specific in-hospital treatments delivered in the private setting.
Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, said the Medical Costs Transparency website was a recommendation of the Advisory Committee, chaired by the Chief Medical Officer for the Government, Professor Brendan Murphy.
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Medical Costs Finder a disappointing first step
MEDIA RELEASE MONDAY DECEMBER 30
The Medical Costs Finder website launched today is a disappointing first step towards the greater fees transparency so sadly lacking in Australia’s private medical arrangements, the Consumers Health Forum says.
“But it is a start and we hope just the first step towards a system in which all doctors’ fees are published,” the CEO of the Consumers Health Forum, Leanne Wells, said.
“The Medical Costs Finder website is an inadequate response to the need for an open and comprehensive presentation of individual doctor’s fees and likely out of pocket costs.
“The Federal Government is promising more detailed information later and we will continue to press for more specific details to guide patients in their choices.
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Doctors' fee transparency website goes live but fails to list who charges what
By Kate Aubusson
December 30, 2019 — 4.39pm
The federal government has launched its long-anticipated - and contested - specialist fee transparency website.
It's a promising debut, say patient advocates and public health experts, but the $7.2 million "Medical Costs Finder" has been criticised for not naming the specialists nor listing their fees.
The website, sent live on Monday, allows patients to search for the typical out-of-pocket costs of 62 common in-hospital procedures and treatments for private patients in their area and between states and territories.
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HIT-related developments in APAC – A 2019 Overview
A broad look of HIT-related developments in the APAC region in 2019, as well as a glimpse of what might happen in 2020.
By Dean Koh
January 01, 2020 09:34 PM
National level developments
Malaysia Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad has said back in November 2018 that “the Ministry of Health is committed to ensuring that the electronic medical record system (EMR) can be realised within three years at 145 hospitals nationwide.” He estimated that it would cost up to RM1.5B to implement an EMR system for the 145 hospitals nationwide in Malaysia over the next five years, HealthcareIT News reported in July 2019. While there has been quite a lot of buzz about the nation-wide EMR implementation in the country, there seems to be a lack of concrete developments in the discussion and execution of the said EMR system, something that we hope to see more of in 2020.
Vietnam, on the other hand, has gone ahead and deployed their nationwide EHR in July last year, with 24 provinces implementing EHRs. Australia’s My Health Record (MHR) has a participation rate of 90% and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), which is in charge of MHR, has been working with software vendors to improve the functionality of the MHR.
At the HIMSS AsiaPac19 conference in October 2019, the HIMSS Thailand National Digital Healthcare Workforce Development Initiative (WDI) was officially launched. This Initiative sees the development of a three-year work plan to address the demand of patients for digital healthcare services in light of the Thailand 4.0 digitization journey, as well as healthcare tourism being one of the key economy drivers.
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Cabinet papers reveal Howard government's Y2K contingency plan
It turned out to be a non-event as the Australian government was well-prepared for it.
The release of the 1998-99 cabinet papers by the National Archives of Australia has revealed that in 1999 the Howard government was deep into developing a contingency plan in fear of what the Year 2000 (Y2K) bug, which ended up not being bad as predicted, would do to computer systems worldwide when the date ticked over from 31 December 1999 to 1 January 2000.
In a submission made to cabinet in March 1999, then Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer and Trade Minister Tim Fischer warned of how Y2K was going to have global disruptions in "banking, finance, transportation, communications, manufacturing, energy, water and sewerage, health facilities, emergency supplies, and food supply".
Downer and Fisher highlighted that Y2K would lead to "internal unrest in the event of prolonged breakdowns in critical infrastructure, including food distribution and supplies, electricity, water and gas networks, and financial services".
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Google AI system beats doctors in detection tests for breast cancer
Hannah Kuchler
Jan 2, 2020 — 3.19pm
New York | Google Health has developed a system that can identify breast cancer more accurately than radiologists, in the latest sign that artificial intelligence could improve early detection of disease in images.
In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, experts from Google Health, Alphabet’s DeepMind unit, and UK and US universities showed the AI model reduced both false positives, in which patients are wrongly told they have cancer, as well as false negatives, where the disease is present but not diagnosed.
Screening mammograms is known to be imperfect, failing to detect about one in five breast cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. More than half of all women are given a false positive every 10 years, causing anxiety and leading to unnecessary treatment, which was estimated in a 2015 study in the journal Health Affairs to cost the US more than $US4 billion ($5.7 billion) a year.
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Australian internet users get better at skirting website blocks
But over half of users still give up when they reach a blocked site.
Australian internet users have become much more adept at circumventing blocked websites over the past year, new numbers released by the government show.
The numbers are contained in the fifth survey of online copyright infringement trends commissioned by the Department of Communications.
This year’s survey results are slightly more aged than usual, having been conducted back in March 2019, but with results released December 27 instead of in the middle of the year.
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HCF calls for independent regulator of medical devices
Health insurer HCF has raised concerns that some doctors may be deciding what device to implant in patients based on commercial factors rather than clinical evidence.
HCF chief executive Sheena Jack has called for the creation of an independent regulator of medical devices that could compare the clinical efficacy of different brands of prostheses to combat the problem.
The independent regulator could make recommendations about which should be publicly funded.
Ms Jack said she was concerned that sales representatives from medical device companies were often present in theatres alongside surgeons, giving instructions on implantation of the prosthesis.
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Vodafone finally cuts deal to build 5G network
Dec 30, 2019 — 10.43am
Vodafone Hutchison Australia has finally reached a deal with equipment vendor Nokia to build Australia's third 5G network, months after competitors Telstra and Optus went live with their own fifth generation networks.
Vodafone said the rollout of the network would begin in the first half of 2020.
The announcement comes weeks before the Federal Court is due to hand down its decision on whether Vodafone should be allowed to merge with TPG Telecom. The $15 billion merger was blocked by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in May on the grounds it would lessen competition in the mobile market.
TPG had been in the process of building a mobile network, but abandoned construction in January.
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Vodafone and Nokia to be partners for 5G rollout
Vodafone has announced it will team up with Nokia for the rollout of its national 5G network.
The partnership, set to last at least five years from the first half of 2020, will deliver the telco’s first 5G coverage to sites in and around Sydney’s Parramatta in the coming months.
Nokia, which will be the network vendor, has already built a test network in western Sydney to demonstrate its 5G technology.
Vodafone CEO Iñaki Berroeta said the rollout is an “exciting milestone” for the company and would be a “seamless transition” to reach its 5G objectives sooner.
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Vodafone Australia to deploy a Nokia-based 5G network
Overcomes Huawei equipment ban.
Vodafone Australia will launch 5G services “in the first half of 2020” on a network comprising end-to-end Nokia equipment, meaning it has found a workaround to the government’s ban on using Huawei gear.
CEO Iñaki Berroeta said the telco had struck a minimum five-year deal with Nokia that “enables Vodafone to place orders with Nokia for site delivery, thus allowing Vodafone to scale up or down the pace of its 5G rollout according to its requirements.”
Berroeta said the Nokia partnership “was the final step in a long process following the federal government’s security guidance in August 2018.”
That guidance saw Huawei and ZTE banned from Australian 5G networks, a move Vodafone warned would change the economics of 5G builds.
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Enjoy!
David.
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