This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
As we are now all aware there was a rather large and possibly State-Sponsored Cyber Attack on Singapore Health A few weeks ago that has just been revealed.
See here:
Hackers steal 1.5 million people's personal data in cyber attack on Singapore's health service
More than a quarter of city state's population illegally copied by hackers 'looking for embarrassing information about prime minister'
More than a quarter of the city state’s population was affected by the “deliberate, targeted and well-planned” attack, in which data on patients who visited clinics between May 2015 and 4 July this year was illegally accessed and copied.
“It was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs,” the government said, adding those responsible had been looking to obtain personal details about the prime minister and the medicines he had been proscribed.
“The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loon’s personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines,” said a joint statement by the Health Ministry and the Ministry of Communications and Information.
In a statement on his Facebook page, Mr Lee said: “I don’t know what the attackers were hoping to find. Perhaps they were hunting for some dark state secret, or at least something to embarrass me.
“If so, they would have been disappointed. My medication data is not something I would ordinarily tell people about, but there is nothing alarming in it.”
You would have thought there would have been comment like, we have noted the incident and are working with the Singaporean Authorities to understand exactly what happened and if there are any implications for the myHR. That would be a reasonable response from an accountable organisation I reckon.
Sadly we have releases on other matters instead – as of 6pm 22/7/2018.
Tenth Clinical Safety Review of the My Health Record System
June 22, 2018
Patient care is improved by enabling clinicians to efficiently identify and utilise relevant information and documents within a patient record. A well-designed user interface to access this information is therefore important for clinicians, particularly when dealing with complex records and large document volumes. Difficulties in navigating and searching large volumes of clinical documents in any paper-based or electronic system can potentially impede appropriate decision-making and management.
The objective of the tenth clinical safety review was to examine the current presentation of clinical documents and clinical information in the My Health Record system via connected Clinical Information Systems (CISs). The review offers usability-focused presentation and design recommendations to enhance clinicians’ interactions with the system in providing patient care.
The ADHA takes 4+ months to review a 22 page authorless document and when you read it you know why.
Among the most interesting things you read are:
1. Almost all displays of myHR data are simple lists and nothing more.
2. Many of the document titles – which you have to open one by one – are not clear and don’t reflect document content.
3. While filtering and sorting functionalities assist with navigating clinical documents, it remains difficult for clinicians to determine which documents contain the information they require. It can be time-consuming to repeatedly open separate clinical documents to find specific information. This is particularly problematic where a patient record contains a large number of clinical documents, especially for chronically ill or polypharmacy patients.
4. The Shared Health Summaries often don’t reflect the data in the GP System.
5. “Some clinicians interviewed expressed concerns that usability-related feedback, provided during the development of the clinical document list specification, was not incorporated by the Agency. In addition, these clinicians indicated that they do not feel the My Health Record system readily supports their workflow or day-to-day activities.
The Department of Health and, since 1 July 2016, the Agency have undertaken a range of consultation processes with representatives of the health sector, software vendors and the broader community to inform future design of the My Health Record system and usability enhancements. While consultation is an opportunity to engage with the key stakeholders, it will raise design expectations for those having direct input to the process. It is acknowledged that there will always be potential differences among stakeholder groups in terms of workflow requirements and the challenges in adopting new workflow arrangements when moving from a paper-based system to an electronic system. Based on clinician feedback it is important that the Agency undertake a feedback process on the outcomes of the implemented design and apply this more consistently going forward.”
In summary the thing does not support clinical workflow and advice, over years, to fix it is just ignored!
6. You can’t easily identify new or update clinical information.
7. You have to open each document individually, and slowly, to know what it contains.
There is little point going on. The myHR is clearly, after six years, not fit for clinical use and the Agency does not have a plan to make it so that anyone is aware of. Read, at your leisure, all the other issues identified. I wonder why the authors are not credited - they are clearly aware what junk the myHR really is!
Basically it is just an overgrown document management system vintage circa 1995. Leave the thing alone until it is made useful and safe…if ever. It is hard not to blame the rather low-level incompetents who conducted the Royle Review for Minister Dutton for not recognising a lot more was needed than the move the opt-out. It needed a fundamental rethink as I have argued for years
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Matt Hancock named as health secretary in cabinet reshuffle
Matt Hancock has replaced Jeremy Hunt as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with the departing secretary of state claiming his successor has a ‘brilliant understanding of the power of technology’.
Hanna Crouch – July 10, 2018
The news of the cabinet reshuffle broke last night after Boris Johnson resigned as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and David Davis resigned as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
Number 10 then announced on social media that Hunt, who became the longest serving health secretary in June 2018, was to be the new foreign secretary with Hancock also named as health secretary.
Speaking on Twitter, Hunt said it was a ‘massive wrench’ for him to leave health.
ResMed (NYSE:RMD) and Google (NSDQ:GOOG) life sciences company Verily said today they inked a new joint venture deal aiming to develop software solutions to improve diagnosis, treatment and care for sleep apnea and other breathing related sleep disorders.
The new US-based joint venture will use sleep apnea knowledge from San Diego-based ResMed and Verily’s data analytics technologies in its pursuits, the companies said, and will operate as a separate venture from both ResMed and Verily.
“The vast majority of people with sleep apnea don’t realize they have it, and therefore don’t seek accessible, effective treatment to mitigate its effects and long-term health risks. The combined industry expertise, scalable infrastructure, and data analytics capabilities of ResMed and Verily can unlock meaningful ways to identify these individuals and support their journey to improved sleep, health and quality of life,” ResMed chief medical officer Dr. Carlos Nunez said in a prepared statement.
July 12, 2018 - As patients continue to assume the role of healthcare consumer, healthcare providers and payers are beginning to leverage healthcare technology that helps connect patients to their care. Those innovations, when utilized correctly, help drive an overall better consumer experience, according to a recent Black Book survey.
The survey of nearly 650 healthcare consumers – 40 percent of whom self-identified as a younger healthcare consumer – found that the digital consumer experience is of high priority. Ninety-two percent of respondents said improving consumer experience should be a top priority for healthcare organizations, up from 71 percent of respondents who said the same in last year’s consumer survey.
Patients largely have high expectations for the health IT offerings from their providers, the survey revealed.
