This appeared last week:
In defence of My Health Record
Dr Steve Hambleton June 3, 2021
In April, Which-50 ran a series of articles critical of the Federal government’s implementation of My Health Record. The system is, however, not without its defenders. One such is Dr Steve Hambleton, a GP and Independent Clinical Advisor to the Digital Health Agency. This is his response.
My patients benefit from the information that I and their other healthcare providers upload to, and view in, My Health Record.
Why? When healthcare providers upload their patients’ information, they save the patient from having to remember and repeat their medical history and carry around hard copies of medical documents. In my patient health summaries, I include the results of my patients’ significant investigations, like echocardiograms and endoscopy findings.
I want my patients’ other healthcare providers, such as hospitals and specialists, to have rapid access to relevant information when they are caring for them. And I want my patients to be able to access their medical history if they can’t contact me. As a part time GP, that is important.
Up–to–date information can also prevent unnecessary duplication of diagnostic imaging and pathology testing. More and more public and private providers are sharing their results with My Health Record, making it a reliable source of key information. With the latest specialist software, test results in My Health Record will be displayed alongside locally held test results — I can’t wait for that to flow to general practice.
I mostly use the medications view to find medication not remembered by my patients, which saves me a lot of time — time I can spend focusing on the patient. In the past, it was a call to the specialist rooms or to their pharmacy.
Immunisation details are now required to be uploaded to the Australian Immunisation Register by all providers and can be viewed quickly through My Health Record to support ourresponse to the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients can also check their own record to see when their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is due.
How people choose to share their health information, and who they share it with, should always be in their control. Better healthcare should never come at the cost of security or privacy. My Health Record system is protected by legislation and is much safer than healthcare providers emailing documents or faxing personal medical information.
My Health Record also proves its worth in times of real need.
The Senior Medical Officer at Wirraka Maya Health Service in Port Hedland, WA, Dr Yolande Knight, relies on My Health Record to keep updated on patient pathology, imaging, medication, dispensing and history records.
The Health Service finds it helpful because a lot of patients move from one region to another, so it can be difficult to get their complete files. They can see what other doctors have requested and performed, overcoming the delays waiting for records requested from other practices and providers. Equally, they can upload and share what they have done, so when the patient attends elsewhere, their record is current and available to other practitioners.
In the recent bushfires and floods, patients with scripts uploaded to their My Health Record were able to have their life-saving prescriptions dispensed — even when they couldn’t get home to get their paper scripts or contact their GP for a new script.
Patients who are rushed to hospital emergency departments are very unlikely to be carrying their medical records that could assist treating staff with necessary information for quick decision making. When patients have information about pre-existing conditions, medications and allergies uploaded to their My Health Record, treating staff can use this information to make faster,better informed decisions. When I was in emergency as a patient, I had trouble describing my problem, let alone my history.
It’s your health and it’s in your hands. So, look at your own and your loved ones’ records (with their permission) and if they are missing documents, ask your healthcare providers to update information so you and they don’t get caught out in future. You can also become a nominated representative for a loved one.
My Health Record use
Consumers and healthcare providers are using the My Health Record in increasing numbers and with increasing regularity. There has been an increase of 120,000 My Health Records since July 2020.
The real measure of success, though, is the number of documents uploaded and viewed by someone else. In the last year, GPs alone have viewed over 650,000 documents uploaded by others — using this information to support their role in their patients’ healthcare.
Public hospital use continues to increase, viewing nearly 580,000 documents uploaded by someone else and uploading nearly 550,000 documents that were viewed by some else in the last year. This, along with nearly 3.5 million medicine documents and more than 3.2 million discharge summaries viewed among the 35 million documents uploaded since March 2020, clearly demonstrates the benefit of My Health Record.
One of the most popular views by consumers is pathology reports. Blood Test Results Explained — Lab Tests Online AU can really help consumers interpret these reports. There are now more than 96 million pathology reports to view — an increase in March this year alone of five million.
My Health Record upgrade
As recently announced by the Federal government, the Australian Digital Health Agency has commenced a major program of work to undertake activities to modernise the national digital health infrastructure to better connect Australia’s healthcare system and deliver significant improvements in the quality and efficiency of healthcare.
The program has been developed with feedback from stakeholders to consider what a digital health ecosystem could be over a ten-year horizon. It supports Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy and the connections between state and territory government services.
It will enable improved use of open APIs and cleaner integration with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).
We have one of the best healthcare systems in the world, but there are still opportunities for improvement. Technology is helping more Australians access safer, better quality healthcare. Today, digital health has become a vital part of a modern, accessible healthcare system designed to meet the needs of all Australians.
Digital health future
The Australian Digital Health Agency is the custodian of the National Digital Health Strategy 2017–2022 and it is time to update it, with a new round of consultations about to begin. The National Digital Health Strategy is about the whole digital health ecosystem, not just the My Health Record.
Lots more here:
https://which-50.com/in-defence-of-my-health-record/
The author of this piece is Dr Steve Hambleton, General Practitioner, Independent Clinical Advisor to the Digital Health Agency, and Board Member, Digital Health CRC
A few things to be clear on at first are that, as he says, he is a part time GP and that second he is a paid member of the Executive Team so he clearly has a ‘dog in this fight’ rather than being independent!
As for the article it is either free assertions of all sorts of benefits to come or claims regarding the centrality of the #myHealthRecord that are simply untrue.
Secure clinical messaging is done by private providers, e-scripts are the same, the myHR is hardly used and progress on interoperability is still waiting to get off the ground while t the national Digital Health Standards setting frameworks, blown up so effectively by NEHTA by poor and arrogant interactions with subject matter experts, among other things, is still recover.
Read all about that and similar matters here:
Sunday, August 02, 2020
The ADHA Releases A Report That Shows The Situation With Digital Health Standards Is Worse Than We Could Have Imagined.
Here is the link:
https://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-adha-releases-report-that-shows.html
So all nice words but not a cogent case to keep spending millions of dollars on a obsolete and irrelevant record system!
What do you think?
David.
He is a nice chap but has long lost any independent credibility, but like those dentists you see on ads on the Tele pushing toothpaste.
ReplyDeleteOh bless, still there are believers out there for just about everything, be it Jewish space lasers, Italian spy satellites that can inject code remotely, to the My Health Record and quarantine jumpers who care little beyound there own short-term interests.
ReplyDeleteAustralia has spent over 10 years and $2billion on a dumb database that collects but does not gainfully use patient health data.
ReplyDeleteCompare this with a little NZ startup Spritely that leverages infrastructure from Postman.com
This is Spritely
https://spritely.co.nz/
"Spritely was founded in 2016 by Christopher Dawson, a tech entrepreneur who wanted to find a way to help his parents maintain their independence.
Christopher teamed up with the age care industry experts at Qestral Corporation, and groups of interested seniors living in retirement village homes. Over the next three years they designed, developed and rigorously tested an age friendly technology solution, to address the real needs and concerns of Kiwi seniors."
https://spritely.co.nz/about/
This is what Postman has to say about Spritely
Spritely is advancing health technology in New Zealand
https://blog.postman.com/how-spritely-uses-postman-to-create-health-tech-for-retirees/
"Spritely is a New Zealand startup that helps retirees stay healthy, safe, and socially connected through technology. The product was inspired by the founder’s struggles to manage his elderly father’s common lung condition (known as COPD) remotely.
Starting with a small prototype movement sensor, Spritely has since evolved into providing a comprehensive ecosystem of interconnected tablets, IoT sensors, medication services, and medical devices like blood pressure monitors and thermometers. Over the last year, our thermometers have been particularly useful during the pandemic.
New Zealand’s COVID-19 lockdowns were mercifully short. Our government, and the so-called “team of five million” New Zealanders, did a famously good job of keeping infections under control. The Spritely office went into full lockdown on March 25, 2020, and came out of lockdown on April 27, 2020—barely a month later.
Our operations, though, were still not easy. During the most strict lockdown (and the less severe restrictions that were in place for most of 2020) Spritely was helping retirement villages manage the health and wellbeing of their residents.
From living room couches and spare rooms across the country, our team developed an age-friendly method of sharing and viewing videos on the Spritely tablet (which villages used to send home workouts and hygiene guidance). We developed a dashboard that allowed villages to remotely screen residents for high temperatures and low oxygen levels, and created telehealth systems that allowed nurses to assess possible cases without risking physical contact. Usage of our video-calling service increased by 400%.
Through the most intense period of software development in Spritely’s history, Postman was a crucial tool enabling us to scope, develop, and test new APIs at unprecedented speed."
The differences between Spritely (healthcare driven, meeting an obvious need) and myhr (some bureaucratic lust for more and more irrelevant, but privacy invasive data) is stark.
Here's some background on Spritely:
https://new-zealand.globalfinder.org/company_page/spritely
https://www.telehealth.org.nz/news/spritely-connected-care/
I doubt that Dr Hambleton has even heard of Spritely, let alone knows how badly myhr stands up against it.
Might be down to accountabilities or lack there of, there is also never any consequence. Robodebt, submarines, drunkenness and other very disturbing action inside government premises. No one seems to be held accountable and no one get more than a doughnut and a chat with a friendly councillor. If you are really unlucky you might get sent to the DTA or ADHA.
ReplyDelete