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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Things seem to be livening up this week with Aust Doctor suggesting there are a heap of issues with the #myHealthRecord and ITnews pointing out the data handling profiles for Secondary Use are still a shambles.
Elsewhere Minister Hunt is passing the blame around and we are all wondering how COVID-19 will work out over the next month or two.
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The 2.9 million reasons why My Health Record is still wasting GP time
With doctors still deeply skeptical about its clinical value, the spin needs to end
12th February 2020
By Paul Smith
There are still serious issues over the My Health Record and whether the billion-dollar system has a future.
Australian Doctor editor Paul Smith warns nothing is being done to address the crisis of faith among the medical profession.
The number is basic, but it helps tell an unwanted story. In December last year, GPs collectively uploaded 2,996,570 documents to the My Health Record.
Over the same period, the number of documents uploaded by GPs that were actually read by another health organisation was just 16,944.
The statistical disparity is a measure of the shallow depths the system has reached in terms of its relevance to day-to-day clinical practice.
Last month, the CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, Tim Kelsey, left for a new job in the US. He had arrived three years earlier to much fanfare, a fat pay packet and a fancy office overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
His tenure was by no means a disaster in a job engineered to cripple reputations: he dealt with the transition to an opt-out system, and pathology and radiology results are now being uploaded en masse.
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My Health Record de-identified data sharing plans pushed back
Basic governance not in place after two years
Controversial plans to share de-identified My Health Record data by default for research and public health purposes have been quietly pushed back, with basic arrangements necessary for the release of data not yet in place.
iTnews can reveal the Department of Health has delayed the release of the first de-identified datasets sourced from the federal government’s $2 billion digital health record system until next year.
Under the secondary data use framework, de-identified data sourced from the My Health Record was to be automatically shared for public health and research purposes from 2020, unless individuals opted out through the My Health Record access controls.
The framework stipulates that de-identified data can be released for a variety of purposes, including the development or improvement of health services, the development of new or improved health care products or services and the development of government health policy.
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States to blame for national real-time script-tracking saga: Hunt
Health minister sets new deadline for 'heel-dragging' states to jump on board
10th February 2020
If you are wondering what happened to the national roll-out of real-time prescription monitoring, Minister for Health Greg Hunt says blame the states.
The introduction of a national tracking system to tackle the deaths and health harms of the opioid epidemic has become one of the longest unimplemented policy initiatives in Australian healthcare — with the first federal reform pledge dating back to 2012.
Five years later, Mr Hunt declared the government would build "a nationally consistent, mandated system for real-time monitoring of controlled drugs", at a cost of $16 million.
However, it subsequently became clear it would only build a "national data exchange" to collate prescription reports from state- and territory-based real-time monitoring systems, which, outside Tasmania, were non-existent.
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AMA Submission On Medication Re-Scheduling.
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The best gadgets for keeping track of your health
AFR BOSS magazine explores the challenges that senior leaders face in maintaining physical and mental wellbeing.
Feb 11, 2020 — 10.51am
A healthful lifestyle and life in the C-suite don’t always fit well together. But somehow the electronics industry has got the two working hand in glove. Or hand in smart watch, at least.
Suunto 7 fitness watch, $799.99
Google’s much-maligned smart watch software, now known as Wear OS, is making a comeback. Suunto, one of the premier brands in fitness watches, has just come out with the Suunto 7, a Wear OS-powered watch that couples Suunto’s expertise in fitness and navigation with Google’s expertise in apps such as messaging, productivity and payments.
Suunto's latest fitness watch has more than 70 sports modes and runs Google's Wear OS for extra apps.
Suunto brings its sophisticated tracking and navigation system to the watch, which includes four satellite systems (America’s GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, Japan’s QZSS and China’s soon-to-be-completed BeiDou system) and more than 70 sports modes, including a lot of swimming-related features.
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How medical software was 'hacked' to push opioids
A US medical software company has admitted taking $1.5 million in kickbacks to create prescribing alerts
11th February 2020
Could your decision-support software be hacked by a malign influence, such as a drug company wanting to subtly boost scripts for its products?
When it comes to the activities of notorious oxycodone maker Purdue Pharma, it seems the answer is yes.
Last month, a US medical software company admitted to taking $1.5 million in kickbacks to create computer alerts designed to push doctors to prescribe extended-release (ER) opioids.
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HBF partners with Oracle as part of tech overhaul plan
Oracle Health Insurance software will be integrated as part of the core platform across all of HBF's health insurance products.
Western Australian private health insurer HBF has partnered with multinational software giant Oracle as part of wider plans to overhaul its technology systems and processes.
"As the provider of our core health insurance system, Oracle will be a crucially important partner for HBF, enabling us to develop and launch products more quickly in response to our members' needs," HBF Health head of transformation Prasad Arav said.
Under the contract, Oracle Health Insurance software, which is touted by the company as "highly configurable", will be integrated as the core platform across all of HBF's health insurance products.
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Wednesday, 12 February 2020 14:16
Oracle Health Insurance supports WA’s HBF digital transformation
Western Australia’s largest private health insurer HBF has chosen Oracle Health Insurance to support its digital transformation.
The move is part of a wider technology investment by HBF to modernise its systems and processes as it pushes to deliver the very best experiences to its members, employees and providers, and become one of the country’s largest health insurance companies.
HBF currently has more than one million members and a strong reputation in Western Australia and with Oracle Health Insurance as the core platform across its health insurance products, HBF has the ability to grow its membership and expand its services throughout Australia.
“As the provider of our core health insurance system, Oracle will be a crucially important partner for HBF, enabling us to develop and launch products more quickly in response to our members’ needs,” said Head of Transformation Prasad Arav, HBF Health Limited.
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Qld Health's new SAP ERP system draws scrutiny
Auditor considers review after problems.
Queensland Health’s $135 million SAP enterprise resource planning system is facing the prospect of audit just six months after it went live across the state’s hospitals and health services.
The Queensland Audit Office has revealed it is currently looking into a potential review of the department’s implementation of the new system following a series of teething problems.
The SAP S/4 HANA solution replaced the department’s 20-year-old and out-of-support SAP ERP suite known as the finance and materials management information system (FAMMIS) in August.
It was the result of the department’s heavily delayed financial system renewal (FSR) project, which replaced a $36 million earlier effort to replace the FAMMIS system that was aborted in 2014-15.
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eHealth NSW starts brokering AWS, Azure in public cloud push
Streamlines adoption for NSW Health organisations.
eHealth NSW has started brokering public cloud services from hyperscale providers Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to streamline the adoption of cloud services by NSW Health organisations across the state.
The digital arm of NSW Health established the brokerage service late last year to provide the state’s 15 local health districts (LHDs), as well as the department itself, with a standard model to consume public cloud services.
eHealth NSW service delivery executive director Farhoud Salimi told iTnews the service – effectively a catalogue offering that can be selected through the SARA [Search and Request Anything] portal – gave NSW Health organisations that ability to create a self-managed cloud.
“We’ve created the service offerings, what’s called a self-managed cloud, which allows LHDs to consume public cloud offerings, whether its infrastructure and/or software services that lie in that provider, in a more secure and controlled manner,” he said.
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Cisco, Flinders Uni open new $1.5m digital health lab
To probe hospital cyber security, digital maturity.
Flinders University has this week launched a new $1.5 million digital health design lab, jointly funded through Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration program.
The lab will examine organisations, technologies and models of care to explore novel ways to leverage data to build better health processes that are safer, more efficient and produce higher quality patient outcomes.
One of the primary research programs will investigate cyber security and privacy measures in hospitals - an area that has at times lagged behind other industries despite the high sensitivity of patient data.
Healthcare consumers are still wary about how digital initiatives like the MyHealth Record and digital prescription services will safeguard data from hackers, insurers and other government departments or service providers.
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More doctors in TikTok trouble
The social media platform is the perfect place to educate teens — but some doctors are being criticised going too far
12th February 2020
More medics have landed in the firing line after their health-related videos on the social media platform TikTok went viral.
The latest under fire is a US emergency doctor, who has been accused of shaming patients who present to emergency with general practice issues.
In the video, Dr Erin Boyd, from Tallahasse Memorial Healthcare in Florida, dances while telling viewers to “leave the emergencies for the ER”.
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Machine vision checks tigers' health at Adelaide Zoo
By Matt Johnston on Feb 14, 2020 7:03AM
Stress-free, passive checkups.
A study at Adelaide Zoo has found a novel way to combine machine vision algorithms with cheap digital cameras to passively check on the health of animals to minimise stress and disruption.
The research from the University of South Australia found that the heart rate and breathing rate of lions, tigers, and pandas could be reliably determined by analysing footage from standard digital video cameras.
Professor Javaan Chahl from the university’s School of Engineering said that the algorithms detect the changing values in the video data as the animals’ chests expand both from breathing - which is more obvious - and a more subtle shift as a result from heartbeats.
“We do some sophisticated signal processing to separate out those two waveforms so we can measure the frequency of them separately,” Chahl said.
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Online contraceptive pill service wants to revolutionise sexual health
By Cara Waters
February 14, 2020 — 2.17pm
Startup Kin Fertility is looking to revolutionise sexual and reproductive health in Australia with the launch of an online subscription service for the contraceptive pill this week.
However, doctors have warned of the risk of going online for healthcare, with the Australian Medical Association urging women to visit their doctor to access the contraceptive pill.
Nicole Liu is the founder of online contraceptive pill delivery startup Kin Fertility.
Kin Fertility was founded by Nicole Liu, 25, after she became frustrated with the time it took and the cost of getting a prescription for the contraceptive pill.
"I was misdiagnosed with polycystic ovaries and told I would be infertile," she said.
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Confusing and unsafe: Why this GP is fed up with his e-records system
13th February 2020
Just when I think I am used to my e-health record system, they change it!
I am on my third iteration, and I am a little disappointed. I am again, still, finding it hard to document and retrieve the thread of my patient’s life and disease story.
I imagine many e-health records were created for episodic, rather than continued, medical care.
One thing that can make working with e-health records difficult is finding the chronology in office visits (seen for sore throat and started on an antibiotic), phone calls (starting to feel itchy, is it an allergic reaction?) and outside reports (emergency room visit for anaphylactic reaction).
I have never understood the logic of storing phone calls in a separate portion of the e-health records, the way some systems do. In one of my systems, calls were listed separately by date without 'headlines' like '?allergic reaction' in the case above.
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App: Helping patients find and join clinical trials
Antony is a medical reporter with a special interest in technology and pharmacy.
13th February 2020
You may already be familiar with ClinTrial Refer.
Since 2013, a variety of apps adapted from the ClinTrial platform have allowed patients to search for clinical trials they may be eligible to join, connecting patients, clinicians and clinical trial units.
Haematology was first, but then the ClinTrial inventors started offering their platform to researchers in other fields.
But these were all separate apps, putting their updates out of sync and making life complex for research teams working across multiple disciplines.
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Aussie doctors back smartwatches for AF patients
An Apple watch helped detect AF in an 80-year-old who was already being monitored, Melbourne cardiologists report
14th February 2020
An Apple watch helped detect a woman’s AF when she reported her heart "doing a flip" at the same time as the device showing her heart rate dropping suddenly, Australian doctors report.
Smartwatches could be helpful in picking up subclinical arrhythmias after the device proved later to have accurately detected the AF, the Melbourne doctors wrote in the BMJ Case Reports.
The 80-year-old patient, with a history of paroxysmal AF, was undergoing routine ambulatory Holter monitoring to assess the adequacy of ventricular rate control.
She was also wearing an Apple smartwatch.
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Tuesday, 11 February 2020 02:31
Coronavirus outbreak ‘severely’ affecting China smart devices market, says analyst
The coronavirus outbreak will severely affect China’s smart devices market including smartphone and PC shipments, according to analyst firm Canalys which says it has dramatically revised previous forecasts of a 7% decline in smartphone shipments to a 40% to-50% drop for smartphones and 20% for PCs - with the proviso that the situation recovers to pre-outbreak levels by the end of February.
“In our previous release, Canalys forecast a 7% decline in smartphone shipments between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020, and an 8% fall for PCs. But given currently available information, we are dramatically revising our forecasts to a 40%to-50% drop for smartphones and 20% for PCs,” Canalys said on Monday.
But Canalys says the forecast scenario “might deteriorate or improve rapidly” as more information becomes available - adding that its analysts have been in “constant discussion with the supply chain and vendors in China on the developments and impact of the coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak”.
Canalys says that prior to the virus outbreak, component manufacturers and ODMs were maintaining production at a minimum level during the Chinese New Year holiday, with limited personnel on-site- “but there are already component factories in Zhejiang and Jiangsu that have been forced to shut down due to the spread of the coronavirus outside of Hubei province”.
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Alcidion Group (ASX:ALC) aims to pioneer healthcare technology
Lisa Simcock Markets Reporter l
11 February 2020 13:30
- Healthcare technology company Alcidion Group (ALC) has updated the market on its second-quarter activities for the 2020 financial year
- The company has already reached a revenue of $15.4 million, nearly matching the total $16.9 million in sales recorded in for the full 2019 financial year
- This month, two contracts were signed with Calvary Health Care and eHealth NSW, adding a further $1 million to the revenue guidance
- The company aims to launch its medical mobile app in the U.K. by the end of March
- Alcidion remains steady on the market this afternoon, selling shares for 22¢ apiece
Healthcare technology company Alcidion Group (ALC) has updated the market on its second-quarter activities for the 2020 financial year.
The company has already reached a revenue of $15.4 million, nearly matching the total $16.9 million in sales recorded in for the full 2019 financial year.
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Investor roadshow presentation and business update
Melbourne, Victoria – Alcidion Group Limited (ASX: ALC) today advises it has released the attached investor presentation and business update, which will be presented to investors this week by Managing Director Kate Quirke.
Highlights from the presentation include:
Highlights from the presentation include:
- Two contracts signed in Q3 since the release of the Appendix 4C, adding a further $1 million of sold revenue to be recognised in FY2020
- An increasing market opportunity showing continued investment in digital health across Alcidion’s current markets and details of Alcidion’s expansion strategy
- Update on Q3 activities, including the planned launch of Miya MEMRe in the UK
Alcidion Managing Director Kate Quirke will be meeting with investors in Sydney and Melbourne from Tuesday 11th February to Thursday 13th February 2020.
To view the presentation, click the image below or see here
To view the presentation, click the image below or see here
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InterSystems releases Novel Coronavirus screening functionality for TrakCare®
Unified healthcare information system provider is quick to respond to help clinicians in China and multiple other countries screen and support patients with 2019-nCov
Sydney, Australia, 11 February 2020 – InterSystems is releasing global functionality for its TrakCare® unified healthcare information system to screen and support patients with the novel coronavirus infection 2019-nCoV.
The functionality is available to users of the latest editions of TrakCare now, and customers in China and multiple other countries have already begun using it.
The functionality enables clinicians to screen patients for 2019-nCoV, using World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance, and a link to the Wuhan Coronavirus Global Cases tracking app provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering in the US.
Icons will indicate whether screening has been undertaken and the results. There is no generally accepted treatment for 2019-nCoV. However, the WHO is advising hospitals to isolate patients and protect others from infection, and the final element of the new TrakCare functionality will advise clinicians of any steps they should take.
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Tuesday, 11 February 2020 10:57
Coronavirus support added to TrakCare health system
Health, government and business software vendor InterSystems has enhanced its TrakCare unified healthcare information system to help screen and support patients with the novel coronavirus infection 2019-nCoV.
This functionality is part of the latest editions of TrakCare, and is already in use in China and other countries.
According to the company, it enables clinicians to screen patients for 2019-nCoV using World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance, and links to the Wuhan Coronavirus Global Cases tracking app provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering in the US.
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G Medical Innovations (ASX:GMV) to raise $10M for debt repayment and U.S. growth
Jessica De Freitas
Markets Reporter
11 February 2020 11:30
- e-Health company G Medical Innovations (GMV) intends to raise up to $10 million to settle its debt and expand its U.S. operations
- The company will repay nearly US$3.5 million to Magna, a New York-based fund, through the cancellation of convertible notes issued in 2018
- At the time, the funding allowed the company to develop its marketing strategy
- Further supporting its strategy is the $30 million funding announced in December from a Luxembourg-based investment group
- The remaining funds from the raise will be put towards growing its U.S. sales team and developing the Prizma and VSMS Patch devices
- G Medical is down 7.62 per cent today, with shares trading for 9.7 cents each
G Medical Innovations (GMV) will pursue a capital raising of up to $10 million and will cancel convertible notes issued to MEF I,L.P. (Magna).
In 2018, Magna, a New York-based fund, invested in G Medical and subscribed to 3,250,000 convertible securities.
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Cash injection for Medius Health’s ‘virtual doctor’, Quro
Carthona Capital-backed healthcare start-up Medius Health is about to raise more money for its virtual health assistant, Quro, with the company on the cusp of signing up major customers in Indonesia and Malaysia.
“We are in late-stage discussions with a big hospital in Malaysia and are talking to a number of hospitals in Indonesia as well,” Medius Health’s chief operating officer and co-founder Sammi Bhatia told The Australian.
“We are hoping to close the deals by the first week of March.”
Medius Health initially picked up $1.2m from Carthona in 2017 and subsequently secured an additional $3m from the venture capital fund in 2019.
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Melbourne Pathology commences uploads of reports to My Health Record
Other Victorian labs sharing reports with consumers and clinicians in the MHR include Alfred Health, Monash Health and VCS Pathology.
By Dean Koh
February 10, 2020 08:42 PM
Last week, Victoria-based Melbourne Pathology became the latest pathology provider to upload reports to My Health Record (MHR). This allows both patients and clinicians to have convenient and secure access to their pathology reports. Other Victorian labs sharing reports with consumers and clinicians in the MHR include Alfred Health, Monash Health and VCS Pathology. The full list of participating providers is available here.
THE LARGER TREND
Last June, the Northern Territory (NT) Department of Health became the first pathology provider to link the online tests results it is sharing via MHR with Lab Tests Online, HealthcareITNews reported. In the same month, South Australia (SA) Pathology also connected to the MHR.
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Safer Internet Day 2020 - Together for a better internet
On Safer Internet Day, consider how to manage your digital footprint.
On Tuesday 11 February 2020, the Australian Digital Health Agency will support the work of Australia’s eSafety Commissioner by spreading online safety messages and promoting the positive use of digital technology. We encourage you to do the same!
Celebrated in over 150 countries, Safer Internet Day's aim is to work ‘Together for a better internet’. All Australians are encouraged to help improve online safety at work, at home and within their communities, and make every day a Safer Internet Day.
initiative provides an opportunity to raise awareness about creating a better and safer internet, protecting your personal information and being conscious of your online profile. On 11 February 2020 take some time to consider how to stay safe online and start managing your digital footprint.
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Health digital identity work progresses
Monday, 10 February 2020
eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
A Ministry of Health working group has developed a draft health and disability sector person digital identification framework.
The Ministry’s health digital identity technical working group has spent the past 18 months creating the framework and will next develop similar documents for identity of organisations, facilities, applications and devices.
healthAlliance head of clinical informatics Karen Blake and the Ministry’s manager architecture and standards Peter Marks presented on the project at the HiNZ Conference 2019 in Hamilton in November.
Blake said health digital identity is a key enabler for interoperability as there needs to be a way of accurately identifying a person in the health system in order to safely share data about them.
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Tuesday, 11 February 2020 23:36
Australians slow to embrace, adopt new technologies
Australians are slow to embrace new technologies according to new research revealing that new technologies are not being adopted quickly in Australia, with only 57% of Aussies reporting they have used smart technologies.
Yet, when it comes to investing in future technologies that enable self-driving cars, the research by almost 50% of respondents would be interested, as compared to the UK (38%) and US (31%).
New research conducted by consumer intelligence platform Toluna, and digital market research agency Harris Interactive, also revealed that 31% of Australians still don’t own a wearable, voice assistant device or smart home appliance.
And according to the research, if Australians were going to invest in new technologies, they report they would be most interested in smart home tech with 70% stating that they would buy a connected home device, such as Google Nest or Lenovo Display, smart light bulbs (62%) and connected appliances (50%).
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Wednesday, 12 February 2020 00:40
Phone, Internet complaints decline in Q4 2019, but mobile overtakes Internet as ‘most complained’ service
Phone and Internet complaints by Australian consumers and small businesses declined in the final quarter of 2019, but there’s been a steady 1% increase in complaints when comparing July to December 2019 against the same period in the previous year.
And mobile replaced internet as the most complained about service type for the first time in five quarters, according to the latest report on complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman..
Failure to cancel a phone or internet service was an issue across internet, landline and multiple services, which the TIO says means residential consumers and small businesses continue to receive bills for a service they are no longer using.
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Biggest evening dip in NBN speeds seen on 100Mbps plans
Fibre-to-the-curb connections reported as having lower latency than fibre to the premises.
Image: ACCC
Users of 100/40Mbps plans on the National Broadband Network (NBN) are seeing an almost 6Mbps dip in their evening speeds according to the latest instalment of the Measuring Broadband Australia report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) covering November.
The report states that the decrease begins after 5 pm, is at its strongest at 9 pm, and is back to normal at 11 pm.
During November, 260,000 download speed tests were completed on 1,212 whiteboxes, with almost 70% of tests hitting 90% of maximum plan speeds, this represented a jump of 5 percentage points on the previous report.
The ACCC also repeated its complaints that no user could achieve more than 95.6% of maximum plan speeds, using it as justification for the ridiculous situation of getting NBN to overdimension its layer 2 plans to allow the ACCC's layer 7 tests to hit 100%.
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Will the NBN cure GPs' fax fixation?
Antony is a medical reporter with a special interest in technology and pharmacy.
14th February 2020
No topic rears its dusty head as frequently as the various failed efforts to axe the fax in medical practice.
The promise of a fax-free world was first entertained by the RACGP in 2016 when it boldly declared the fax should be extinct within three years.
Its prediction seemed to flounder when the alternative method of communication — secure messaging via practice software — stalled because the plethora of messaging systems were still incapable of ‘talking’ to each other.
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Vodafone and TPG $15bn merger gets court approval
ACCC loses the case.
Vodafone and TPG have been granted permission by the Federal Court to merge, paving the way for the stalled $15 billion deal to proceed.
The Federal Court on Thursday overturned a bid by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to block the merger from proceeding.
Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) welcomed the decision, saying the two telcos would now "work to complete the merger".
“It’s been 18 months since we commenced the approval process for this merger and we’re very keen to move forward and deliver these benefits as soon as possible,” VHA CEO Iñaki Berroeta said.
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NBN fibre to the node speeds still falling short, ACCC says
Average FTTN speeds dragged down by underperforming services
Editor, Computerworld | 12 February 2020 11:43 AEDT
The latest edition of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Measuring Broadband Australia report reveals that fibre to the node (FTTN) continues to trail other NBN fixed-line technologies when it comes to delivering the speeds households are paying for.
The report is prepared for the ACCC by UK company SamWare using hardware probes installed in volunteer households.
The report covering the period 1 November to 30 November 2019 reveals that, on average, FTTN connections delivered 80.8 per cent of the relevant maximum plan speed during periods of peak usage in the evening (and 81.9 per cent overall).
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NBN Co operating expenses, capex drop as rollout nears finish line
Fibre cost declines, cost of other connection technologies rises
Editor, Computerworld | 11 February 2020 10:02 AEDT
Although NBN Co’s losses deepened in the first half of its financial year, if the payments to Telstra and Optus for migrating their customers to the National Broadband Network are discounted the company’s earnings soared 264 per cent to $775 million.
The company made a net loss of $2.82 billion, compared to $2.15 billion for the last same period in 2018. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation were negative $2.14 billion for the six months to 31 December, compared to $1.71 billion for the same period in the prior year.
Total revenue grew 39 per cent to $1.81 billion.
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NBN Co's HFC, FTTC costs now higher than expected
Final part of the build sees numbers spike.
NBN Co saw rises in the cost-per-premises for two-thirds of its access technologies in the first half of FY20, with hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) and fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) costs now higher than the company’s corporate plan forecasts.
The company said today that complexities encountered in the home stretch of the main network build contributed to the higher-than-anticipated numbers.
NBN Co saw its HFC costs rise $154 per premises to $2744 in the last six months of 2019. It had forecast a cost-per-premises (CPP) of $2660 for the full year - FY20 - in its most recent corporate plan.
In addition, FTTC cost-per-premises rose $120 in the last six months of 2019 to $3249, against a corporate plan forecast of $3200.
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Tuesday, 11 February 2020 10:24
NBN Co boosts National Broadband Network half year revenue to $1.18 billion
NBN Co, the company building Australia’s National Broadband Network, lifted total revenue by 39% to $1.18 billion for the six months to the end of December 2019, with company chief Stephen Rue declaring the result “outstanding during a crucial time of the build”.
The upbeat assessment and revenue increase followed what NBN Co said was “strong momentum in total activations and continued residential and business revenue growth”, with business revenue climbing to $319 million, up from $214 million for the half year.
NBN Co also reports that activations over the six months saw more than 907,000 residential and business premises activated for the first half of FY20, lifting total activations to 6.44 million at 31 December 2019.
And the revenue increase delivered earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) - before subscriber costs - of $775 million, while monthly residential Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) was $45, up from $43 in HY19.
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NBN Co loss climbs to $2.1b for half-year as subscriber costs rise
By Zoe Samios
Updated February 11, 2020 — 10.34amfirst published at 9.37am
NBN Co has posted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) loss of $2.14 billion for the half year due to increasing subscriber costs.
Subscriber costs for the half year were $1.43 billion, up from $690 million in the previous period.
But NBN Co boosted revenue by 39 per cent in the six months to December, with earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) excluding subscriber payments - the preferred metric - at $775 million. Including payments, NBN Co posted an EBITDA loss of $663 million.
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NBN Co begins renegotiating its role in enterprise market
Questions how users can be held responsible for fibre build costs.
NBN Co has outlined the uncertainties it faces from no longer entering direct contracts with large enterprise and government users, including clawback mechanisms for fibre build costs.
The network builder had faced months of sustained industry backlash over the way it approached the enterprise and government (E&G) market.
Providers already in that market criticised NBN Co for running more fibre into already well-served commercial premises, and for engaging directly with E&G users despite being a wholesaler.
In response, NBN Co said it would try to use existing fibre into commercial buildings where possible.
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Enjoy!
David.
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