Thursday, August 08, 2024

Is This Report Just The Same Old, Same Old? Looks like Bureaucracy Squared To Me!

 This appeared last week:

Council for Connected Care inaugural review report released


Friday, 02 August, 2024


The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has welcomed the inaugural annual report of the Council for Connected Care.

The council is a multi-stakeholder advisory group that provides strategic guidance and direction on how to improve health outcomes for Australians through a more interoperable digital health system.

ADHA CEO Amanda Cattermole PSM said, “The Council for Connected Care has been a catalyst for change and a champion for healthcare interoperability. It has brought together an outstanding group of leaders who share a common vision of a more connected and integrated healthcare system.

“All Australians expect a healthcare system where information is shared safely, securely and seamlessly with the right people at the right time to deliver the best clinical outcomes.”

The ADHA said that the Council for Connected Care Annual Review shows progress has been made in advancing the interoperability agenda, with collaboration and knowledge building resources shared centrally on the agency’s website, including:

  • National Healthcare Identifiers Roadmap 2023–2028 to increase the adoption and use of healthcare identifiers in health and care settings.
  • Digital Health Standards Catalogue, a comprehensive resource that provides a single point of access for relevant standards in digital health.
  • Conformance framework to ensure digital health products and systems are operated in a manner that aligns with safety, security and interoperability standards.
  • Draft procurement guidelines to provide guidance to healthcare organisations seeking to purchase digital health solutions and harmonise interoperability requirements in ICT procurement.
  • Drafting national Health Information Exchange architecture in consultation with jurisdictions and key stakeholders.
  • Supporting the adoption and implementation of national interoperability standards, such as FHIR and SNOMED CT, through education, training and testing resources.
     

Council Chairperson Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan said having a more connected healthcare system was an important pillar of consumer safety and puts Australians firmly at the centre of their care.

“It has been a privilege to work with senior leaders across the healthcare system, united by the common purpose of realising fully optimised and interoperable digital health records, which remain foundational to safe and high-quality care.”

The council was established in June 2023 as part of the Connecting Australian Healthcare – National Healthcare Interoperability Plan 2023–2028, which was auspiced by all governments to significantly reduce fragmentation and increase information sharing across the healthcare system.

Here is the link:

https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/news/council-for-connected-care-inaugural-review-report-released-709203735

This is a new grouping for me so I had a look:

Council for Connected Care

Providing strategic advice on interoperability and supporting the implementation of the National Healthcare Interoperability Plan.

Contact us

Phone: 1300 901 001 
8am - 5pm (AEST/AEDT) Monday - Friday 
Email:  help@digitalhealth.gov.au

Role of Council

The Council for Connected Care will:

Here is the link:

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/healthcare-providers/initiatives-and-programs/interoperability/council-for-connected-care

There are 33 members of the council, and they have held six meetings to date.

Here are the members:

Conjoint Professor Anne Duggan (Chairperson)

Chief Executive Officer

Australian Commission on Safety & Quality in Health Care

Professor Peter Sprivulis (Deputy Chairperson)

Chief Clinical Information Officer

WA Health

Dr Jason Agostino

Senior Medical Advisor

National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation 

Mr Simon Bush

Chief Executive Officer

Australian Information Industry Association 

Ms Annie Butler

Federal Secretary

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation 

Ms Amanda Cattermole PSM

Chief Executive Officer

Australian Digital Health Agency

Professor Wendy Chapman

Associate Dean of Digital Health and Informatics

University of Melbourne

Mr Simon Cleverley

Assistant Secretary

Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care

Dr Elizabeth Deveny

Chief Executive Officer

Consumer Health Forum 

Ms Kirsty Faichney

Deputy Chief Executive Officer

Services Australia

Mr Michael Frost

Group Head, Primary Healthcare, Information Standards & Communications Group

Australian Institute of Health & Welfare

Ms Mary Ann Baquero Geronimo

Chief Executive Officer

Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia

Dr David Hansen

Chief Executive Officer

Australian e-Health Research Centre, CSIRO

Dr Rob Hosking

Chair Expert Committee on Practice Technology and Management

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

Ms Emma Hossack

Chief Executive Officer

Medical Software Industry Association 

Dr John Lambert

Chief Clinical Information Officer

NT Health

Mr Chris Leahy

Chief Operating Officer

Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care 

Ms Laurie Leigh

Chief Executive Officer

National Disability Services 

Mr Keith McDonald

Chief Executive Officer

South Western Sydney, Primary Health Network

Ms Bettina McMahon

Chief Executive Officer

Healthdirect

Dr Danielle McMullen

Vice President

Australian Medical Association 

Adjunct Associate Professor Steven Morris

Chief Executive Officer

Pharmaceutical Society of Australia

Ms Anja Nikolic

Chief Executive Officer

Australasian Institute of Digital Health

Ms Jackie O’Connor

Policy Lead

Allied Health Professions Association

Mr Peter O’Halloran

Chief Digital Officer

Australian Digital Health Agency

Dr Christopher Pearce

Chair Digital Health Committee

Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine 

Mr Michael Roff

Chief Executive Officer

Australian Private Hospitals Association 

Mr Richard Skimin

Corporate Member Representative

Australian Patients Association

Adj. Professor Ruth Stewart

National Rural Health Commissioner

 

Mr Tom Symondson

Chief Executive Officer

Aged & Community Care Providers Association

Ms Lisa Todd

Economics, PBS and Data Director

Pharmacy Guild of Australia

Mr Mark Upton

Director, Strategy, Information Management and Governance Office

Tasmanian Department of Health

Professor Trish Williams

Digital Health Expert

Flinders University

We have a meeting on August 8 – so if you wish to raise a matter contact one of those listed above.

It is very hard to tell just what this august membership has delivered for the Australian people.

Perhaps we could have an email – explaining in a page or so – the value that has been added and the difference that has been made? I would love to publish such a summary!

What do you think this Council will deliver other than attendance fees for the members?

David.

8 comments:

  1. The use of “Agenda” in this context is similar to its emerging use in “Transformation” lately—it is a great way to avoid actually having to come up with a set of plans, outputs, and measurable results. This is ironic as these same people worship the “ if you can’t measure, you can’t manage it” philosophy. It would be good if they tackled the funding models rather than areas they have no real commitment to.

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  2. The number of organisations claiming to improve healthcare by achieving better access to health data is ridiculous, especially when there has been no real or meaningful progress in decades

    https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/centres-institutes/nossal-institute-for-global-health/research/navigating-health

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  3. It would be good if they tackled the funding models. @john - that would s a problem looking for a solution - wrong cohort of people for that

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  4. We have really lost the plot, I somehow doubt that more than a handful of those people have any idea of what the barriers to interoperability actually are and none will have a deep understanding. The biggest barrier is groups like this who keep proclaiming plans, usually involving the latest trendy technology (That they know little about).

    I have been enabling interoperability for 25 years and the problems are always the same, crappy, untested software and poor standards compliance by both sender and receiver which they simply refuse to fix and often don't know enough to appreciate their errors.

    Add to this government $$ to badly implement the latest "fix" rather than make their software do what it currently does correctly. We have badly implemented PIT, V2, CDA, V3, FHIR, SOAP etc along with failed government PKI implementations despite obscene expenditure for no gain.

    I have given up listening to these bodies, as trying to actually make things work on the ground, when they won't work out of the box, occupies my time in a useful way. The most amusing line is that if you don't co-operate we might replace you, That's a classic "Go on, make my day line" and I have heard it many times, but sadly the people saying it are clueless and don't know enough to appreciate that fact. A financial crash with a need to cut waste might be the only way this madness will end? The ADHA and this group could easily spend billions and achieve exactly the same as Healthconnect/NEHTA/ADHA etc which is nothing useful.

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  5. AI will fix it - just prompt the ice president of question engineering

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  6. Dr Ian ColcloughAugust 11, 2024 4:14 PM

    I totally concur Andrew. It's a great travesty that the Ministers responsible today, like Mark Butler, Bill Shorten, and many others before them, contine to turn a blind eye and a tin ear to the situation in the misguided hope that maybe one day a solution will evolve.

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  7. Interoperability!? There's more of it, too much to cope with. See Bill Shorten out today spruiking Govt's TEx. https://theconversation.com/albanese-government-developing-proposal-for-new-digital-id-system-to-protect-personal-information-236603
    Last week the Victorian health services discovered that amalgamation as a way to rationalistion was just too difficult. Maybe someone whispered to the Minister that the States control registries of prime identifying data - births, deaths, marriages, driver licenses, etc - and none of that (AFAIK) is filtered upward to national databanks and harmonised with GovID, passports, etc., let alone useful to move patient data between networks.
    I'd like to know if ADHA has surveyed healthcare institutions to find out if they are using IHI in their information systems.

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  8. One can be 99.9% confident that the IHI is barely being used by anyone or any service provider.

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