This is all a bit sudden after about 13 years and I am sure many will be wondering why?
There may be more to this story than meets the eye, given how sudden and unheralded the announcement is.
I will leave it to others to assess her legacy and impact.
Here is the announcement e-mail. Dated 31/07/2023 - 5.00 pm
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Dear David,
I'm writing to introduce myself in the capacity of Interim CEO of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.
You will probably have seen that Dr Louise Schaper left the position of CEO of the Institute last week after nearly 14 years leading the Health Informatics Society of Australia and later AIDH after its 2019 merger with the Australasian College of Health Informatics. I would like to start by recognising all of Louise’s achievements during that time and her huge contribution to the field of digital health.
I’m a Fellow of AIDH and was a member of HISA beforehand. I’ve seen the Institute go from strength to strength. We have a solid strategy in place, our membership is committed, the digital health community supports our agenda to advance the workforce, and our networking and events program has resumed, mostly in person. On that, the MedInfo 2023 global congress was a great success on all measures and a catalyst for international policy discussion in our sector. Thank you to everyone who attended or contributed to its success.
I am greatly looking forward to working with you in coming months to keep up the momentum of work underway and keep our sights firmly set on the AIDH vision for “healthier lives, digitally enabled”.
Regards,
Mark Nevin FAIDH
Interim CEO
Australasian Institute of Digital Health
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I am sure we will hear more in due course! Extra info. and comments welcome!
David.
14 years is a long time rounding up cats! Some can quite happily scratch your eyes out.
ReplyDeleteJust a continuation of the purge of non-government aligned thinkers David. The background and posts of this new pawn are an obvious fit.
ReplyDeleteWhere once there was colour there is now grey. My thoughts and prays go out to all those who work for our community in healthcare.
@6:15AM I don't think AIDH is linked to, controlled or influenced by the government. Rather, it is beholden to the vendors is it not.
ReplyDeleteI think 6:15 is correct in a sense - the bureaucracy is incapable of allowing free radicals. This will be part of a long-term plan. They did this with other entities in the past, AIDH and HL7 Aus, all partnering with .gov.au bodies and will all be trapped. Let’s return in two years and see.
ReplyDeleteWho chairs AIDH?
ReplyDeleteHaving watched this for 25 years I have come to the conclusion that the Department of Health is mostly engaged in multinational corporate welfare, and are "Not even trying" to fix the issues, which the current crop probably don't even understand.
ReplyDeleteI have been summoned to speak with the heads of NEHTA 1 and 2 and early ADHA who seemed to have finally grasped the nature of the problems, but within months they were gone and there has been an increasing trend of appointing non technical highly bureaucratic heads who have no clue about anything technical whatsoever and just bankroll consulting groups who produce reports that demonstrate a very superficial understanding of both the requirements and the technical barriers but always have bills in the hundreds of thousands so I guess they must be worth something??
Alignment with this clueless management is a path to climbing the ladder into the abyss and we are left with vendors half doing whatever technology was trendy when they were paid to implement, but no compliance testing was ever done. However organisations as above only get government $$ if they fall into line and in the end no one in a position of power has any real technical ability. We are at the "Plastic Surgery on a Pig" stage, as the lipstick wasn't working.
Wish Dr Louise Schaperall the best. A legacy to be proud of and I am sure more to come.
ReplyDeleteWe have lost a sense of exploration and discovery in Australian eHealth. Perhaps it's best Government, Consultancies and vendors hand Australian healthcare over to machine learning trained on US, UK, EU etc.. Data.
re: Andrews "Having watched this for 25 years I have come to the conclusion that the Department of Health is mostly engaged in multinational corporate welfare, and are "Not even trying" to fix the issues, which the current crop probably don't even understand."
ReplyDeleteFor those of us with long memories, the original push for the PCEHR was headed by a project manager in the Department of Health.
The current incumbent in the Department responsible for Digital Health is another project manager, this one who once worked in the Department of Defence.
SNAFU.
This shows how dangerous reliance on IT for healthcare can be. Conversely, protecting against IT failure, for whatever reason, is very, very expensive.
ReplyDeleteBe careful what you wish for (or propose, or sell, or implement)
A cyberattack has disrupted hospitals and health care in several (USA) states
https://apnews.com/article/cyberattack-hospital-emergency-outage-4c808c1dad8686458ecbeababd08fecf