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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A quiet week with nothing to really scare the horses!
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/telstra-health-explains-its-350m-medicaldirector-purchase
Telstra Health explains its $350m MedicalDirector purchase
The move comes as GP software vendors eye the wonders of the cloud
1st November 2021
By Paul Smith
Recent times have seen a devaluation of big numbers to the point where you have to remind yourself that dollar figures with nine digits remain a big deal.
Back in August, Telstra Health revealed it was buying MedicalDirector, reportedly for a cool $350,000,000.
The subsidiary of Australia’s biggest telco has been a presence in the health system for some time now and it had previously shown interest in MedicalDirector before — at least until it was snapped up by private equity a few years ago.
But its purchase is still a big splash into general practice.
So why does medical prescribing software, the mechanism underpinning so much of a GP’s clinical life that it can often be overlooked, attract that level of big business interest?
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Sunday, 31 October 2021 18:17
Manage your blood pressure and more with the 3-in-1 wireless Withings BPM Core
French-based medical IoT company Withings continues to deliver with its wireless blood pressure monitor, developed with cardiologists and offering one-button activation.
Withings has been making an impressive name for itself with an increasing range of simple to use, but surprisingly effective, Wi-Fi-enabled home medical devices - all of which have been clinically certified for accuracy and reliability.
Some of these are clever augments to devices you already have, such as the Withings Cardio Body Scale. It's a scale, of course, but it measures more than weight alone, and it wirelessly transmits readings to the companion Withings Healthmate app so you can monitor, track, and analyse your results without having to write anything down. Of course, Healthmate also syncs with Apple Health and Google Fit so all the other apps in your health and fitness ecosystem benefit.
Others are things you might not have ever considered, such as the Withings Sleep Monitor, a mat that plugs into power and rests under your mattress. From then on you don't need to do anything except sleep … the device also feeds info into the HealthMate app wirelessly, giving you remarkable insight into how well you are sleeping and thus helping inform the actions you can take to improve. I've been using this device myself since World Health Sleep Day in March and it genuinely shocked me how awful and erratic my own routines had become. With the aid of the metrics and patterns surfaced by Withings products, I have since made positive changes.
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Digital aged care transfer summary on near horizon
Australia’s digital health agency says work to design and deliver a digital transfer summary for aged care is underway.
The Aged Care Transfer Summary will be an addition to My Health Record and enable residential aged care providers to digitally capture residents’ health information for transfer to another health facility, such as hospitals.
Aged care providers will be able to send and receive documents through secure messaging.
Australian Digital Health Agency branch manager of program and project delivery Laura Toyne said the transfer summary aimed to minimise “pain points” when sharing residents’ health information.
“We know that the yellow transfer envelope that often accompanies patients or residents as they move between settings doesn’t always get to the right place at the right time. And we have heard as well from particularly in the hospital sector, they’re often ringing back residential aged care facilities.
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AMA submission to Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) consultation on the mHealth applications Assessment Framework
2 Nov 2021
The AMA provided a submission to the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) consultation on the mHealth applications Assessment Framework and commended ADHA for initiating this very important work for the future of digital health in Australia.
The AMA sees the evolving mHealth apps landscape as an area of opportunity for improved outcomes for clinicians and patients alike. For that reason the AMA called for the Assessment Framework to be established in such a way that is not tokenistic, but rather a deep study of apps safety, data security, and their reliability.
Key issues when developing the Framework for the AMA will be its ability to provide confidence to clinicians using the apps and recommending apps use to their patients, its capacity to balance the risks and benefits, alignment of the Framework with the TGA’s regulation of medical devices and testing of apps in clinical settings.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/if-you-liked-telehealth-youll-love-telepharmacy/57151
2 November 2021
If you liked telehealth, you’ll love telepharmacy
AMA Pharmacy Political Technology TheHill
By Holly Payne
The Australian Medical Association is calling for an end to the country’s “undeniably anticompetitive” pharmacy environment, citing pandemic-borne technology and attitudes as a compelling reason for change.
In a discussion paper examining the existing regulations around community pharmacy, the AMA took aim at the rules around community pharmacy location and ownership.
While many GPs were somewhat familiar with telehealth before the pandemic hit, it was relatively new ground for pharmacies.
The AMA isn’t the first body to take issue with these regulations: the system has been criticised in Productivity Commission reports dating back 20 years.
“In 1999, the Productivity Commission noted that the strict rules around pharmacy had prevented the evolution of pharmacy in Australia, specifically noting that mail-order pharmacy, which was common in many other countries, had not been able to be effectively introduced for Australians,” the AMA discussion paper said.
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https://marketplace.service.gov.au/2/digital-marketplace/opportunities/17102
Australian Digital Health Agency
Delivery of ADHA Experience Centre Research Participants Panels
Opportunity ID
17102
Deadline for asking questions
Wednesday 10 November 2021 at 6pm (in Canberra)
Application closing date
Friday 12 November 2021 at 6pm (in Canberra)
Published
Thursday 4 November 2021
Panel category
User research and Design
Overview
The Agency is seeking to procure research participant panels through organisations who specialise in research participant recruitment. Research participants must include but are not limited to healthcare consumers, carers, healthcare professionals and service providers of diverse backgrounds, social determinants of health, age, digital literacy and other factors to participate in the testing and evaluation, by physical and virtual means, of various digital health solutions
Estimated start date
22 November 2021
Location of work
Australian Capital Territory
New South Wales
Queensland
Offsite
Working arrangements
Combination of on and off site subject to prevailing COVID conditions
Length of contract
Until 30 June 2022
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/digital-care-post-covid-not-a-tsunami-just-a-big-wave/57346
4 November 2021
Digital care post-covid: not a tsunami, just a big wave
COVID-19 Technology Telehealth
By Holly Payne
Countless new health tech innovations may have popped up over the past two years, but has it been enough to overcome hesitancy toward telehealth – not just in the general public, but within the medical profession too?
Don’t make any assumptions on what will stay, Dr Angus Ritchie, CIO of Sydney Local Health District, told a recent Wild Health webinar on post-pandemic digital health.
“I’m not sure we’ve totally smashed [that hesitancy], but we’ve definitely put some very big dents into it,” Dr Ritchie said.
“Those dents are to a large enough degree that there will be a relatively small cohort that just don’t want to go back, who will continue to be very digital- and telehealth-first.”
Dr Ritchie, who successfully scaled up virtual outpatient clinics at the beginning of the pandemic, said it was likely that telehealth acceptance would follow a similar trajectory to the acceptance for electronic medical records.
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http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=3085
Smart Health Cards at the HL7 Australia Connectathon Nov 2021 (#FHIR)
Posted on November 5, 2021 by Grahame Grieve
HL7 Australia is running a virtual connectathon 23-24 November 2021. See https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/inaugural-hl7-fhir-trans-tasman-connectathon-registration-193185943357 for registration (free!).
One of the tracks will be focused on Smart Health Cards (see my earlier post about that), and I’m leading that track. So here’s a call for participation.
The primary focus of the track will threefold:
- helping developers who need to produce valid smart health cards do that
- Helping developers who need to read and verify smart health cards do that
Obviously those two activities will be extremely technical, very much a programming focus. For people who fit into either of those two categories, the two days will be a working session: producing SHCs, and checking they’re valid with the formal tools, and checking reading apps read them correctly. We’ll be focusing on covid vaccination certificates and lab tests, and we’ll primarily be doing exchange of certificates by email.
The fact that our primary exchange will be email, and that some of the tools are consumer ready tools: that means that non-technical people – policy makers, business analysts etc, they can join as well, so:
- we’ll also have a focus suitable for non-technical people too, around understanding the use of smart health cards
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https://wildhealth.net.au/over-55s-may-be-more-tech-savvy-than-you-think/
4 November 2021
Over-55s may be more tech-savvy than you think
Aged Care Apps Patient Engagement Technology Telehealth
Research out of the UK shows that doctors often stereotype older patients and assume they lack of comfort with technology, a view that’s out of step with real-life experiences for over-55s.
A survey by the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) found that GPs were far less likely to recommend NHS-approved health apps to help older patients manage symptom monitoring, medication reminders and treatment tracking.
ORCHA reported that doctors recommend health apps to one in 10 patients under 35, one in 25 patients over 55 and one in 50 patients over 65.
UK-based patient safety advocate Helen Hughes told the Telegraph that when doctors didn’t recommend approved health apps because of ageist assumptions about digital literacy in older people, patients could be at risk from incorrect information from the many unreliable health apps available more broadly.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/healthcare-cloud-solutions-to-watch-20211031-p594sh
Healthcare cloud solutions to watch
How to invest in technology companies that help manage patient and healthcare outcomes.
Elio D'Amato Contributor
Nov 2, 2021 – 5.00am
As Australia emerges from the pandemic and life returns to normal, healthcare is set to experience more complex and challenging operating practices.
Having to juggle the new normal with business as usual will likely put a strain on many organisations. One key pillar seen by the sector as a means of managing this challenge is to harness technology to boost the data exchanging to which healthcare providers and other stakeholders have access.
In a report tabled by Deloitte into the outlook for global healthcare, it was noted that spending on cloud solutions by medical practitioners increased by 11 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, with more likely to come.
Further, it noted that artificial intelligence is gaining traction in the healthcare setting – not only to automate manual processes but also to solve complex clinical and non-clinical problems.
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Wednesday, 03 November 2021 11:23
Personify Care implements digital patient pathways for Central Adelaide Local Health Network to relieve workload
The Central Adelaide Local Health Network partners with Personify Care to co-design digital patient pathways for CALHN patients across 20+ speciality areas and multiple sites namely: the Royal Adelaide Hospital, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and SA Dental.
The collaboration saw CALHN deploy Personify Care’s technology. Protocols were converted into digital patient pathways (deployed to patients in under four weeks) and within just seven months have been demonstrated to:
Reduce elective surgery cancellations: 28% reduction on day
of procedure cancellations at the Royal Adelaide Hospital
Reduce workload pressures: 85.1% of the Royal Adelaide Hospital patients
supported by digital patient pathways no longer required manual pre-admission
follow up
Reduce Cat-1 wait times: 71% reduction in wait times for Category 1
Gastroenterology procedures at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Patient adoption: 83% patient adoption rate across all patient populations
Personify Care’s digital patient pathways were co-designed based on existing clinical and administrative protocols that were deployed to improve the patient access and experience while reducing the workload on frontline hospital staff.
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InterSystems IRIS for Health™ and First Line Software to Streamline Clinical Research Workflows on i2b2
InterSystems IRIS for Health joins the i2b2 community to close interoperability gaps and enhance collaboration among the research community
SYDNEY, Aust., November 2, 2021 – InterSystems, a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability and speed problems, today announced that InterSystems IRIS for Health™ is now recognised as a data platform for i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside) alongside Postgres, MS SQL and Oracle. A data platform specifically engineered to extract value from healthcare data, InterSystems IRIS for Health will support the i2b2 community to improve research workflows and performance outcomes.
Prior to the creation of i2b2, clinical research data management was a manual process. Because of that, data was often very siloed, which meant research needed to be conducted based on data available at a single research site. Developed as an open-source resource kit, i2b2 helped break down those barriers and has made it possible to find patients that fit study criteria across many sites, independent of their location, improving collaboration and lessening interoperability gaps in the process.
“With more than 100 large research institutions around the world using i2b2 technology, the global i2b2 research community has led many large-scale clinical research efforts, including those of COVID-19,” said Qi Li, MD, physician executive at InterSystems, who also serves on the i2b2 tranSMART foundation board. “However, research communities still look for solutions that can accelerate clinical trial recruitment and real-world evidence development.”
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How Australia’s helping to fight the snowballing threat of space junk
By Alan Duffy
November 7, 2021 — 5.55am
NASA space debris expert Dr Don Kessler was the first to observe that once the amount of space debris reaches a critical point, unavoidable collisions will cause more debris, in a disastrous chain reaction that will make space inaccessible to us. This has been termed the Kessler Syndrome. Once the cascading collisions begin, they cannot be stopped.
For the past two decades, some low-Earth orbits may already have accumulated that critical amount of debris – or so Kessler has calculated. We are like the skier beneath the avalanche-prone ridge, with dangerous amounts of snow built up and awaiting the smallest shift to trigger catastrophe.
Already, space experts estimate there are 12,000 pieces of debris 10 centimetres long and larger that we can track, but nearly one million from one to 10cm in size, and over 100 million pieces smaller than a centimetre that we simply can’t see coming. At the speed with which such pieces of debris travel in orbit, a single screw has the energy of a grenade upon collision.
Since we rely on satellite technology for everything from navigation to weather reports to communication to security networks underpinning your local ATM, if space were to become inaccessible it would dramatically change our way of life.
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Enjoy!
David.
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