Thursday, September 12, 2024

The Department Of Health Still Seems To Be Hoping The MyHealthRecord Will Become Widely Used. I Have No Idea Why!

This appeared last week:

Australia releases aged care CIS standards

It will underpin the interoperable connection between My Health Record and aged care digital care management systems.

By Adam Ang

September 05, 2024 09:21 PM

The Department of Health and Aged Care and the Australian Digital Health Agency have released a set of minimum software requirement standards for clinical information systems and electronic medication management systems used in residential aged care.

The Aged Care Clinical Information System (ACCIS) Standards set the foundation for information sharing and interoperability in residential aged care. 

According to Ryan Mavin, ADHA Connected Care branch manager, the standards provide a "clear and consistent direction for software developers and aged care providers on how to design and implement [CIS] that meet the needs and expectations of residents, their families and care teams, and ensure they will connect seamlessly with all national digital health infrastructure."

It is based on the following principles:

  • Data is reliable, consistent, computable and contemporary. 
  • Data can be seamlessly shared between systems, care settings and organisations. 
  • Data is accessible and transparent and drives improved consumer choice and decision-making. 
  • Data drives efficient and safe clinical decision-making and positively impacts the end-user experience. 
  • Data is captured once, retains its original meaning, and can be used securely many times, as appropriate. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Sam Peascod, assistant secretary of Digital and Service Design at the Department of Health and Aged Care, said the ACCIS Standards are critical to support aged care reforms. 

One of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety in 2021 was the mandatory use of My Health Record-interoperable digital care management systems.

The standards are expected to drive the uptake of telehealth, remote monitoring, and data analytics in the aged care sector, according to Dr George Margelis, chief technology advisor of the Aged Care and Community Care Providers Association.

Moreover, ADHA's Mavin said that the ACCIS Standards will help enhance the continuity and coordination of care for older Australians, especially during transitions of care. 

THE LARGER TREND

The ADHA recently put up an offer to vendors of CIS and mobile CIS software in allied health to make more products that connect to My Health Record and electronic prescribing services. 

The offer comes as the ADHA recently introduced an upgrade to Provider Connect Australia (a portal for healthcare providers to update their business information) that allows CIS to connect via SMART on FHIR. 

As part of its National Infrastructure Modernisation programme, the ADHA is currently building a FHIR-based Health Information Gateway, which will be a scalable platform for exchanging and accessing health information, including vaccination records and aged care data. Its build contract was awarded to Deloitte in 2021.

Here is the link:

https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/anz/australia-releases-aged-care-cis-standards

What to say – it again seems to be an instance of hope over experience in terms of getting traction of any form with the myHR!

The question still is – who needs and why do they need to use the billion dollar myHealthRecord? No good answer has yet emerged!

David.

3 comments:

  1. Who needs it and why? Clearly, various Commonwealth departments, agencies, and research organisations do - why? It makes a convenient demonstration of cross-government collaboration; that collaboration makes the MYHR look mighty important, which makes the collaborations look mighty important, which must be funded because collaboration is good - and round and round it goes. Anyway, that is my perception; some good occasionally falls off the co-investment collaboration heist truck, but not to the scale that would be remarkable.

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  2. The My Health Record is not needed by medical practitioners and their patients. Neither is it needed by hospitals, aged care facilities and pharmacists.

    It is however needed by bureaucrats, technology exponents, the ADHA, and others with a vested interest in ensuring its continued existence, as without it they would have nothing to do which would mean that they would then have to find alternative employment.

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  3. Those "principles" show that they don't understand the difference between financial and other transactional data and health data which is uncertain, unreliable over time, contextual and observational.

    In other words most medical/health data is not "... reliable, consistent, computable and contemporary"

    And the idea that "data is captured once, retains its original meaning, and can be used securely many times, as appropriate" is naive in the extreme.

    Any patient becoming sick and, if they are lucky, recovering will exhibit changing conditions. It is quite normal for data to change according to circumstances. Data is never captured once and its meaning is open to interpretation.

    This person sounds like yet another health IT project manager. Should fit in very well at ADHA/Department of Health.

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