Over the last few months we have had a series of examples of deceptive claims and information distortion being foisted on an unsuspecting public by the ADHA with their endless press-releases and the celebrity well paid stethoscope-wearing doctor!
Often featured among these release has been the absurd pushing of the size of the #myHealthRecord document pile as an index of the success of the record while well over 40% of the populations #myHealthRecords (on their figures) have not a single tiny skerrick of information of any sort of them.
This of course is really just as silly as pushing that the system contains 4 million Shared Health Summaries. This means that only 1/3 or less of the information containing records (forget all the empty ones) actually have what is the document that is/was meant to be the whole rationale for the system. The idea was that the GP prepared a clinical summary of the patients (medications, allergies, major illnesses etc.) that would assist others involved in your care.
The agency scrupulously avoids mentioning the age profile of all the documents that have been accumulating in the pile since the PCEHR went live all those years ago! (Can you believe it was July 1, 2012!) That is close to eight years ago – so at least some of the billions are actually that old. How useful do you reckon they still are?
You can read all the other fun statistics here.
https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/statistics
In passing I noticed this page of video on Facebook with various promotional messages.
https://www.facebook.com/MyHealthRec/videos/287219425788568/
Despite typos like the following in the latest title “Add important helth information to your record” these video are being looked at only a few hundred times despite having available there for months. (the ADHA video explaining COVID-19 has only had about 200 views in 2 months! – so has just basically been ignored!)
The point is that there is a media unit in the ADHA that is pushing useless meaningless statistics and producing video information on Facebook that no one watches. They are also costing real taxpayer dollars which could be much better spent.
Just in passing has anyone seen the promised clinical benefits studies of the #myHealthRecord?
Time for a wholesale clean out I believe and a new very small unit with transparency and honesty as core values!
What do you think?
David.
23 comments:
A wholesale cleanout! Don't you mean close down the entire project?
Are you serious? What will this "new very small unit" that you are proposing do? Who will head it? What will be it's goals and scope?
I had in mind one or two people who actually told the unvarnished truth and responded to requests for information as to what was going on honestly and without spin.
A tall order I realise!
David.
You can't be serious! Funded by who? Government - Federal or State? After all the money and political capital Federal and State Governments have invested you surely cannot seriously think they would be prepared to turn the Gatling gun on themselves!
I understand they have about 40 spinners now. Cutting the number to 2 and making them honest works for me!
We still need some of the ADHA to support SNOMED and AMT and Standards stuff.
David.
Standards stuff? Standards stuff like ..... this and that and something else! I thought they had turned their backs on 'Standards'. Are they doing some great work on Standards? Do you mean like Interoperability Standards and Secure Messaging Standards?
????? 40 spinners ???? What. You mean 40 media and communications people writing stories, marketing flyers, press releases, marketing propaganda and other miscellaneous indicia?
Yes I mean terminologies and the various foundational Standards that make Digital Health work and which need to be evolved and maintained as time passes.
All aspects of this need more love and attention from ADHA IMVHO!
David.
@4.53 M ..... "which need to be evolved and maintained" ! ??
If they need to be evolved it means that they are not yet ready and mature enough to be maintained. If that is so it follows that and R&D approach is required and not some all encompassing rollout of a half-baked national digital health solution not yet ready to support clinical workflows. Tell me I'm wrong, I won't be offended.
Over time new ideas and approaches emerge, become proven and need to be standardised. Think of the way FHIR has emerged to solve some interoperability issues and is now being Standardised.
David.
So I'm thinking. It all sounds haphazard, seat of the pants stuff. Hang about while we work it out.
Don't have a strategy thought through? Don't worry, one will "emerge" when we work out where we're going, unless we get there first, wherever that is!!
@6:50 PM It does sound as though the strategy David has in mind is rather never-ending based on waiting for stuff to emerge driven by I'm not sure what exactly. FHIR is a good example, it has a very long way to go, emerging slowly. There must be other examples too. Is this an appropriate National Digital Health Strategy? Seriously, I don't think so.
Standards stuff, David has probably forgotten more about standards than many will learn and has earned the right to be casual. In a nutshell there is still a long-term investment need to support the Australian health sector and the community at large with the goal to make services better for healthcare workers and patients, improve cost of development for platform and service providers, lower operating costs, improve interoperability options and ensure that Australian Digital Health is scalable, reliable, portable and competitive.
An independent body focused on knowledge of national and international health information standards that, orchestrates adoption through leveraging what we can to minimise effort for development and maintenance through;
Collaboration with technical and clinical experts together, allowing these important partnerships to;
Guide the recognition of and overall use of relevant health information standards and interoperability needs and;
Look for opportunities to adopt standards as digital systems are being conceptualised, designed and implemented or updated for the purpose of;
Ensuring the best care and wellbeing of the Australian community is maximised for the benefit of all.
A error made with standards by some was the misguided belief that they were a one off short-term investment. Rather than strategic investments that continue to shape ongoing dividends.
Anon 6:50 and presumably the other posts in the thread, please do excuse my French but you are an idiot.
@8:50 PM I don't think 2:55 PMs question "Don't you mean close down the entire project?" is idiotic, on the contrary I think it would be eminently sensible to close down the entire project.
Out of interest what project are we talking about? The MyHR is hardly a project it is operational. There are hundreds of projects out there some under CRC some under ADHA some under states and territories, some other numerous other departments, agencies, PHN, college’s, peak bodies and private sector players NFP NGO etc......
ADHA is not a project it is a commonwealth entity established by parliament.
Ohhhh ... the blog was referring to the ADHA and the My Health Record! Perhaps your spectacles need a clean too
@8:35 AM agree. It's the only $2billion project around. That's where all the focus has been unless there's another project hidden away somewhere.
It seems at least some of them read your blog David the typo You identified appears to have been amended. You raise some valid points. Just what are we getting from the ADHA media team and just what makes up this business function? Is it merely a content creator, or does it include all the supporting web services and publishing needs?
Either way, it is a large cohort of people crafting content to seemingly non-existent audiences. Not remarkable by any measure. From a marketing perspective I don’t get their strategy and the use of numbers, really who cares, what they need to be triggering is why would an under usual or organisation want to use this platform?
I struggle with the messaging and strategy at the ADHA. Perhaps they need to reflect and ask if they have the right leadership.
Talking about fun statistics. We have just passed the first anniversary of The Department of Health's last update of "Digital Health Data" (15 May 2019) which had some useful and revealing detailed statistics on myhr.
https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/PHN-Digital_Health
Health has a new website and if you go to it and do a search for "Digital Health Data" you get the old website.
There is also a reference to Digital Health on the old website
https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/eHealth
"5 July 2018 - This section of the site contains information and resources relating to digital health. ... Digital health is the electronic management of health information to deliver safer, more efficient, better quality healthcare."
It will soon be the second anniversary of the last update to that page.
There is also reference to: "My Health Record: National Opt-out". That was last updated 15 November 2018, well before the opt-out period closed.
As far as Health is concerned, Digital Health is old news. It's rather like a problem child. You don't mention them and hope nobody asks.
Best to file a record Bernard before they move to delete access entirely ,which they will do as soon as they get ADHA and MyHR repositioned like what is happening in the UK with NHSX. The X stands for user experience, signalling the start of a new multi billion dollar extravaganza. Australia will follow suit mark my words.
Anon 5:05pm
re "Best to file a record Bernard"
If you mean make a copy. Been there done that. All the myhr stats, all the PHN stats.
And I'm keeping a record of the government's announcements of COVIDSafe downloads.
FYI, since 11 May the app has been download at a rate of about 37,000/day. Considering there was a critical update on 14 May, very few people have the current version. It's also being suggested that users need to keep both on the phone and running.
A couple of comments regarding Covidsafe.
- I again observed that very few Bluetooth signals were discoverable over the weekend as I went about shopping at a bust supermarket and strolled through a well used public space.
- the comments in the app store do not indicate the app is we designed or tested. Noting people are more likely to report poor experiences.
- the latest IOS (13.5) has been released and includes several additions to support tracing and other COVID related needs. I have seen nothing from DTA to indicate if they are releasing another update to take advantage of Apples new resources.
As always seems the government has moved onto a new bouncing ball and this has been left to roll around on the floor like an accident waiting to happen.
Yes, bouncy balls and government’s half-baked, half-assed, half-a-job mentality is the common thread. Nothing Scotty from Marketing says or does, will bring about change, he knows this. So you won’t be surprised that the Australian Federal Government has a budget offset rule administered over a four-year horizon, mentioned in the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service released in December 2019. ‘This means that any savings that are realised beyond the four-year budget estimates period are not available to agencies to fund transformational investments.’
And this has been in place since 2010.
So here we are, with a worldwide trend that long-term ‘infrastructural’ investments are rarely approved. The only option available has been to keep limping along on ageing technology.
The appalling record of technology transformation programmes when they do get investment such as MyHR, Medicare payments, Qld eHealth etc…. Once the technical debt reaches a certain level, the cost of the risk of failure is higher than the investment cost. Hence, managers who rarely expect to be in the role more than five years kick the can down the road hoping someone else has to take the risk.
This mindset or cultural norm infects the entire APS, which is why you see DTA start with a wide and a bang and then quickly fizzle out.
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