This Looks Like An Absurd Frolic With Public Money I Reckon.

I noticed this a few days ago.

Communities Of Excellence

Better health for all Australians

Communities across Australia could benefit from improved integration of digital health.

The Agency is focussed on improving digital health outcomes in Australian communities through the use of technology to deliver better quality healthcare  – especially during transition of care, such as from the community to the hospital when medication errors are most likely to occur.

The digital health Communities of Excellence program will create learnings from a fully connected community, which could be replicated across similar communities. 

The focus will be on key digital health initiatives such as My Health Record, secure messaging and telehealth.

Two of the communities that will take part in the initiative are Emerald in Queensland and Hedland in WA. The population size, strong local clinical and digital leadership as well as community support make the two communities ideal for this initiative.

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My Health Record connections

A key focus for Communities of Excellence is connecting healthcare providers to the national My Health Record system and helping consumers make the best use of it, including understanding the control they have over the security and privacy of their information.

For healthcare providers, the project will develop local clinical case studies that demonstrate how My Health Record delivers the most value to the communities. This might be supporting telehealth consultations, supporting transition of care, or providing timely and accurate information for local care providers for non-residents.

As a consumer, My Health Record lets you control your health information securely, in one place. This means your important health information is available when and where it’s needed, including in an emergency. You can control access to your record and decide what information is added and which healthcare providers can access it.

Healthcare providers like doctors, pathologists, and pharmacists can add a wide range of documents about your health and care to your record. These are known as clinical documents.

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A strategy for all Australia 

Communities of Excellence is part of the digitally enhanced models of care priority in Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy, which was agreed by all states and territories in 2017.

The program is a collaboration between communities, governments, organisations and healthcare providers to ensure that learnings are achieved before national roll out, where applicable. 

The Framework for Action is the implementation plan for the National Digital Health Strategy and details how all those in the digital health ecosystem are working together to help empower people, and those who care for them, with modern digital services and products.

Here is the link:

https://conversation.digitalhealth.gov.au/communities-of-excellence

Having selected two small remote towns to be examplars (selection criteria were “The population size, strong local clinical and digital leadership as well as community support make the two communities ideal for this initiative.”) of the program you really wonder what they are smoking.

I may be wrong but I did not know Emerald (pop. 14,000) and Headland (pop. 15,000) (Port Headland I assume) were towns with exceptional digital health skills, community enthusiasm and clinical depth. I wonder has anyone told the good Burgers of these remote spots on the Ozzie map that this is the case?

Instead of this nonsense it might be a good idea to get the #myHealthRecord security and privacy sorted like the Audit Office suggested!

Wandering off shaking head in despair!

David.