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."

Saturday, December 14, 2013

NEHTA's Web Site Has A Long Outage. Wonder Why?

This is the message:

Important Notice

NEHTA has scheduled maintenance activity for this website on Saturday 14 December, between Australian Eastern Standard Daylight Savings Time 10am to 10pm.

Access to this website will be unavailable during these hours. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Friday, December 13, 2013

The USA Continues Steaming Along With Their Health IT Implementation. There Is A Lot Happening!

This appeared a little while ago.

Q3 2013 Federal Health IT Activity

by Helen R. Pfister, Susan R. Ingargiola, and Erica L. Cali, Manatt Health Solutions Monday, October 21, 2013
The federal government continued to implement the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, during the third quarter of 2013. Below is a summary of key developments and milestones achieved between July 1 and September 30.

Highlights

The third quarter of 2013 saw a number of important developments:
  • National Coordinator Submits Resignation. On Aug. 6, Farzad Mostashari announced his resignation as National Coordinator for Health IT, effective Oct. 4. Principal Deputy National Coordinator David Muntz also announced his resignation in September. Jacob Reider is serving as acting national coordinator, and Lisa Lewis is serving as acting principal deputy national coordinator until permanent replacements are announced. 
  • ONC, AHRQ Release Health IT Safety Plan. On July 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, in collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, published a final version of its Health IT Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan. The plan addresses the role of health IT within HHS' commitment to patient safety and builds upon the recommendations made in the 2011 Institute of Medicine report, "Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care." The plan has two related objectives: (i) use health IT to make care safer; and (ii) continuously improve the safety of health IT.
  • ONC Releases Health IT Strategic Plan Progress Report. In June, ONC released a progress report highlighting key steps the federal government has taken to implement the five strategic goals of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2011-15: (i) achieve adoption and information exchange through meaningful use of health IT; (ii) improve care, improve population health and reduce health care costs through the use of health IT; (iii) inspire confidence and trust in health IT; (iv) empower individuals with health IT to improve their health and the health care system; and (v) achieve rapid learning and technology advancement.
All the details are found here:
The rest of the article covers a really broad range of initiatives in Standards, Privacy and Security, Health Information Exchange and Consumer Interaction.
Well worth a careful read.
David.

Outcome Of Council Of Australian Governments Meeting - December 13, 2013

It was really simple:

Essentially no mention of Health and zilch on e-Health.

Here is the link.

http://www.coag.gov.au/node/516

A fizzer in terms of this blog's key interests.

David.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

This Really Reflects Just How Wrong The Design Of the PCEHR Is. Sad That.

This appeared a few days ago.

The Rules And Tools Of Patient Engagement

12/5/2013 09:45 AM
Doctors must capitalize on patient curiosity about their own medical records.
For generations, doctors have been saying we want our patients to be more involved in their care, since we know the value engaged patients play in improving outcomes for many preventable illnesses, from heart disease to diabetes. But today, most doctors are not adequately using an available tool to help patients take ownership of their care: the electronic medical record (EMR).
A new Accenture survey shows that the majority of US consumers (84%), armed with their smart phones and home computers, want real access to their electronic medical records. Many individuals (41%) would be willing to switch doctors to have it. But at the same time, just over one-third (36%) say they have full access to their EMR. In contrast, a similar survey of physicians shows the majority (65%) believe patients should only have limited access to their electronic records.
These differing points of view are reminiscent of the time Elaine tried to steal her medical chart on an episode of Seinfeld. Even so, I would argue that patients and doctors can find some common ground.
These trends, as well as other factors, are shifting the role of an EMR system from a mere clinical repository to a platform for shared decision-making between doctors and patients. In this way the process adds transparency and a far more constructive collaboration to the doctor-patient relationship. Increasingly, consumers will seek tools for addressing these two key areas, but they need not exist together to be effective.
Lots more discussion here:
What is clear from this survey is a point I have made a few times before.
The things patients value with access to an EHR record are many of the things the PCEHR will never to. Pretty sad no one asked to few experts before the program was kicked off.
David.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

There Is A Real Sting In The Tail In These Great Reported Results From The Use Of Analytics In Healthcare.

Two very interesting reports appeared a week or two ago.
December 5, 2013, 7:12 PM ET

Data Helps Drive Lower Mortality Rate at Kaiser

REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. — Kaiser Permanente’s use of data analytics is helping it lower hospital mortality rates and look for ways to diagnose illnesses earlier. John Mattison, chief medical information officer at Kaiser spoke, Thursday, at VentureBeat’s Data Science Summit in Silicon Valley. Dr. Mattison predicts that by the year 2020, ten times more medical research will be generated by analyzing vast quantities of medical data than by conventional models of clinical research. 
Over the past several years, Kaiser Permanente’s hospitals in southern California – the region with the most members — have enjoyed a lower mortality rate than the national average, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Today you have a 26% lower chance of dying in one of our hospitals than you do in other hospitals,” said Dr. Mattison, adding that Kaiser is starting to lower its mortality rate much faster than the national average. “A lot of this is directly rated to how we use data and integrate data,” he said. 
Kaiser Permanente has some advantages in data collection over other medical providers because it provides physician, hospital and pharmacy services as well as health insurance to patients. All of those records are electronic. When a patient visits a Kaiser hospital, their entire health record, including doctor visits and medications, is immediately available. Kaiser can easily track patient outcomes after hospital procedures because patients see their doctors within the Kaiser system for follow-up visits. It’s a closed loop and all of that information resides in one place. 
The informatics department at Kaiser, which is growing, looks at medical studies as well as information from its anonymized pool of information about patient outcomes to make implementable recommendations that it sends to physicians and hospitals through information alerts. One of the most high profile examples of this happened about a decade ago when Kaiser looked at its database of 1.4 million members and discovered that patients who took Vioxx were more likely to suffer a heart attack or sudden cardiac death than those who took a competing medication. Physicians were resistant to these alerts in the early years but the culture has changed and the informatics department continues to get requests for more of these alerts, said Dr. Mattison. 
More here:
We also had this appear on the very same day.
December 5, 2013, 10:32 AM ET

Analytics Helps UPMC Slash Readmission Rates

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has slashed readmission rates by 37% since it began using analytics to predict which patients were more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.
That represents considerable savings for the hospital in terms of providing urgent care, let alone saving the hospital from potential penalties levied by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for failing to lower those rates.
The trouble for most hospitals is that they’re geared up for the “average patient,” whereas no one is actually an average patient. The role of analytics at UPMC is to determine most precisely which course of treatment will be most effective for each individual.
“Analytics helps you determine who you should focus on,” said Dr. Pamela Peele, chief analytics officer for the UPMC Insurance Services Division during a visit to CIO Journal offices.
According to Dr. Peele, the factors that hospitals should pay attention to are “jaw-dropping.” Far from the actual health of the patient, those factors have to do with how patients used care in the past – what services they’ve received over time and whether the use of the services has been “lumpy or smooth” over time.
Lots more here:
What we have here are very positive reports of the value of analytics in improving hospital and health system performance at the level of the most important measure - improved clinical outcomes.
The sting in the tail is that both the organisations involved are very strategic users of Health IT and have been evolving and improving their Health IT infrastructures over decades. They also have integrated environments where EHR data from both hospitals and ambulatory systems is easily accessible as well as the billing / insurance information and all that can be used for analysis.
For Australian Hospitals they have no access to the GP records and Medicare Payment records - so it now becomes very tricky to obtain such benefits.
It is really only those organisations that hold relevant ambulatory, hospital and insurance information which is easily accessible, and that also have a very advanced IT infrastructure that can replicate this. I wonder are the gurus and NEHTA and DoH working out how these sorts of benefits can be replicated in Australia or is the plan to mine the PCEHR to do a very second best effort?
Time will tell I guess.
David.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Talk About Putting A Rosy Spin On The State Of Health IT In Australia. The Old Government’s Last Gasp.

This appeared a few days ago.

Austrade releases Health IT Capability report

Australia’s health IT industry has its roots in a long history of using innovative communications technology to improve healthcare delivery. Back in 1929, the invention of an affordable pedal-powered radio gave people in isolated areas access to advice and emergency medical services from the newly founded Royal Flying Doctor Service.
More here:
Here is the official description from the web site.
Australia’s health IT industry has its roots in a long history of using innovative communications technology to improve healthcare delivery. Back in 1929, the invention of an affordable pedal-powered radio gave people in isolated areas access to advice and emergency medical services from the newly founded Royal Flying Doctor Service. Today, the Australian Government and industries are investing strongly in health IT, ensuring that Australia is at the forefront of best practice. Supported by a highly skilled and technology-driven workforce backed by leading research institutions, Australian expertise in a range of health-related disciplines is in international demand. This industry capability statement provides an overview of Australian capability in the health IT industry, including examples of some of the many Australian companies with specialist expertise.
Here is the link.
The report direct link is here:
The Industry Overview makes really wonderfully cheerful reading!

Industry Overview

“While much of Australia’s health IT development has been led by the private sector, the Australian Government’s National Health Reform Agreement, launched in 2011, lists eHealth as a key area of focus.
A number of initiatives and large-scale programs, such as the national personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) program and integration of services provided by government departments involved in healthcare delivery and funding, will continue to boost IT investment in
the sector, delivering opportunities for enterprises to develop systems and solutions for both the domestic and international markets.
Total IT expenditure by the healthcare industry was estimated to be over A$2 billion in 2010, including spending on telecommunications, services and software.
Australia’s growing health IT capabilities are underpinned by a strong commitment to research and development in the health and biomedical sectors.
Companies involved in the biomedical industry invested an estimated A$610 million on research and development in 2012, in addition to A$750 million invested by the National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC) in medical research.
Within Australia’s nationally coordinated approach to health IT, there are multiple semi-independent sectors, including:

  •  integration of healthcare-related services delivered by multiple government departments
  •  the national PCEHR (personally controlled electronic health record), implemented by the national eHealth Transition Authority (NEHTA)
  • medical training and simulation
  • mobile computing platforms for data analysis
  • medical imaging
  • clinical analysis of patient data
  • patient flow, demand management and operational management
  • treatment scheduling, prescribing,reporting and diagnosis
  • management systems solutions
  • telehealth, telemedicine, assistive technologies and mobile health for remote delivery of health services
  • medical software.”

----  End Extract
This is an official Government report that was apparently finalised in August 2013, despite only being released a little while ago.
Talk about a glass 99% full description of where we are. Clearly there are some very good companies battling away in this sector but the rosy description of just what the Government is doing is pretty fanciful in my view.
I am just thrilled to note that “Australia (has a) nationally coordinated approach to health IT." I wonder who is co-ordinating and how we get to have a chat to him / her? There are a few things I suspect a few people might like to say!

It is good to see that it is NEHTA that has implemented the PCEHR
David.

Another Thought On The PCEHR Review. What Happens After The Review? Updated 12:00pm 10/12/2013

Was thinking about the review and the possible outcomes from the current review.

My mind then wandered to the practicalities that might need to follow.

I anything is planned in the way of trying to modify / fix the PCEHR then it would be foolish not to attempt to do it properly.

Inevitably this would then have to be a consultative, thorough, technically complex and hardly short or cheap effort.

To me this suggests that the review team has a rather binary choice in front of it. It can either

1. Can / Kill the PCEHR and work on all the other e-Health things that need to be fixed.

2. Specify major change to actually attempt a proper fix and then undertake properly a large, complex, expensive, time consuming and risky project to fix the both the central system and all the associated practice systems while keeping something running in the mean time.

The second option would be hard to recommend I reckon given the track record of many of those involved who, almost inevitably, would be involved again!

The downstream implications of what the short review recommends has not really been given enough thought I believe.

What do others think? This seems like a big largely unmentioned issue to me.

David.

Addendum: I just have to say that the risks of any project to try an fix the PCEHR from this point really must not be underestimated. An obvious problem is that a small fix almost certainly won't work and the major re-design will really require a project that will be close to the scale, complexity and cost of the original PCEHR to date. Essentially that seems to suggest spending little will be a waste and spending what would be needed may very well cause a cash strapped Government heartburn.

Is that why Mr Dutton keeps lashing out at the PCEHR?

See here for yesterday's comments:

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=CHAMBER;id=chamber%2Fhansardr%2F5f0f5c44-95ba-4857-8d00-f969c7b99627%2F0096;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F5f0f5c44-95ba-4857-8d00-f969c7b99627%2F0000%22

D.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 9th December, 2013.

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

A quiet week with some more submissions coming to light and what feels to be a hardening resolve that there need to be, at the very least, some major change in the PCEHR.
Outside that we have the silliness of a recruiting team swooping in to recruit the good burgers of Guyra to register for an e-Health record and some innovative announcements on some new technology.
We also have a very cautionary tale of the risks of malware encrypting data on your hard disk and demanding a ransom to allow access.
-----

E-health records could expose GPs to legal risk

3rd Dec 2013
THE rollout of the PCEHR has been focused on accumulating registration numbers rather than targeting those who would benefit most from it, and potentially exposes medical practitioners to medico-legal risk, the RACGP has warned.
The criticism of the beleaguered PCEHR scheme was included in the college’s submission to the review of the billion-dollar program.
It called for the suspension of the current development program and argued the process had “moved away” from stipulations that clinical information within the records be clinically curated.
It said the development program should move towards a “focus on targeting those consumers who will benefit most from a PCEHR, rather than the current focus on sheer numbers of consumer registrations”.
-----

Include transfer info in electronic records: IT council

By Darragh O'Keeffe on December 3, 2013 in Government, Technology
The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) must include sufficient patient discharge/transfer functionality, complete medication records and meaningful capture of vital signs for health conditions.
That’s according to the Aged Care Industry Information Technology Council (ACIITC) in its submission to the federal government’s review of the PCEHR.
ACIITC, which is a joint venture of Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) and Aged & Community Services Australia (ACSA), said that discharge from hospitals and transfers between aged and health services was a key area to complete the “integrated health concept” in critical information flow.
-----

E-health: We need enlightened leadership more than ever

Here in the Midwest we have looked at an alternative to the PCEHR: a shared electronic health record not owned and operated by the government.
This seemed like a good solution as it would solve some of the problems health professionals have with the PCEHR, including secondary use of the uploaded information (data mining) by the government. I wrote a couple of posts about this topic here and here.
Unfortunately our Medicare Local seems to have taken full control of the shared health record system. This means that, again, health professionals and patients have no say in what happens to their data once it is uploaded to this alternative e-health system. There is an advisory committee (just like the PCEHR) but the Medicare Local board calls the shots as they pay the bill – with tax dollars.
-----

Clinician and consumer confidence is the key to the PCEHR

Spokesperson: AHHA
6 December 2013
The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), currently under review by the Australian Government has the potential to be an effective tool supporting high quality healthcare but must address the needs of both clinicians and the consumer is required.
The uptake by both patients and clinicians of the PCEHR has been extremely limited,” says Alison Verhoeven, Chief Executive of the AHHA. “To make the appropriate treatment decisions and develop suitable care plans, clinicians require timely access to relevant parts of their patients’ medical history.  This is particularly important for patients with chronic conditions and ongoing care needs that have regular interactions with multiple health providers.”
Unless clinicians have the confidence that the PCEHR will provide the complete picture they need, they will continue to shun the system.  If clinicians don’t support the system then patients are unlikely to engage and vice-versa.”
-----

Austrade releases Health IT Capability report

Australia’s health IT industry has its roots in a long history of using innovative communications technology to improve healthcare delivery. Back in 1929, the invention of an affordable pedal-powered radio gave people in isolated areas access to advice and emergency medical services from the newly founded Royal Flying Doctor Service.
-----
Australia’s health IT industry has its roots in a long history of using innovative communications technology to improve healthcare delivery. Back in 1929, the invention of an affordable pedal-powered radio gave people in isolated areas access to advice and emergency medical services from the newly founded Royal Flying Doctor Service. Today, the Australian Government and industries are investing strongly in health IT, ensuring that Australia is at the forefront of best practice.
-----

Telstra targets ‘more convenient’ pharmacy system

3 December, 2013 Nick O'Donoghue
Communications giant Telstra, is planning on creating a safer, efficient and more convenient pharmacy system, PulseIT reports.
Telstra Health released a wide-ranging strategy for its move into the health care market last month, following its “significant investment” in pharmacy IT company, Fred Health.
In the strategy, Telstra identified six major challenges in health care that it can become a major contributor to solving by building an “e-Health eco-system”.
As previously reported by Pharmacy News, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said, the strategic partnership between Fred and Telstra Health reinforced Fred’s commitment to providing IT innovation and leadership for pharmacy and pharmacy customers long term.
-----

eHealth Registration Day for Guyra residents 

Dec. 5, 2013, midnight
The Guyra Medical Centre team with support from the New England Medicare Local invite the Guyra and surrounding community to an eHealth Record Registration Day. 
The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record or eHealth Record initiative has the potential to bring together, in one secure easily accessed record, a summary of your key health information. 
Most people have medical records stored in multiple systems across the health care sector. These systems do not routinely share information, meaning it can be challenging to keep track of all your health information and ensure it is in one, easy reference place. 
The upcoming eHealth Registration day, to be held at the Guyra Medical Centre on Wednesday December 11 will enable you to take advantage of this opportunity to register to create your own eHealth record. The record will allow you and your doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to view and share your health information. This in turn will enable them to provide you with the best possible care. 
-----

Qld takes court action against IBM

Mark Ludlow
The Queensland government is seeking damages from global information technology company IBM over its handling of the botched health payroll project.
A spokesman for Queensland Premier Campbell Newman confirmed on Thursday night a statement of claim had been lodged in the Supreme Court to seek compensation for the failure of the health payroll system, which is expected to cost taxpayers up to $1.2 billion.
“Now that the matter is before the courts it would be inappropriate to provide further comment,” the spokesman said.
The extent of the legal action as well as the damages being sought remained unclear at this stage.
-----

Call to jump online and get healthy

05 Dec
Australians are quick adapters to technological change, but personal health records are proving a different story.
All Australians should be automatically signed up to the national health records system, according to a patients lobby group.
Consumer Health Forum, which represents more than 2 million consumers, says Australia should “bite the bullet” and make joining the system automatic unless patients choose to opt out.
-----

HealtheNet turns on sharing

Clinicians in hospitals, community health organisations and general practices across four local health districts (LHDs) and five Medicare Locals in NSW, will now be able to access clinical information on shared patients’ records.
The NSW Health clinical portal, which went live at the end of October in South Eastern Sydney LHD, Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD and Children’s Hospital Randwick, contains 1.2 million clinical documents (including electronic hospital discharge summaries), electronic ‘blue book’ records for infants, 1.9 million NSW hospital visit histories, and access to over 1 million medical imaging studies and an enterprise patient registry linking all NSW identifiers, which currently contains 15 million patients.
HealtheNet Program Manager Yin Man says that extending the system to another 15 hospitals across NSW (making a total of 24 hospitals), comes after extensive testing of the system with the National Infrastructure Operator and NEHTA.
-----

PCEHR under review, but is it “unfixable”?

By Dylan Bushell-Embling   |   Thursday, 07 November, 2013
The Coalition government this week scheduled a review of the much-maligned personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) project.
Decrying poor take-up rates among Australian clinicians despite the $1 billion spent on the system, the government scheduled the review to explore options including inviting private sector involvement in the provision of the electronic health records.
Announcing the review, Minister for Health Peter Dutton said the PCEHR program has failed to attract enough doctors to participate. A year after the system was introduced, he said, only a “fraction of Australians” have established a record and just a few hundred doctors have added a Shared Health Summary.
-----

Open Sourcing my FHIR Server

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Grahame Grieve
Since early in the FHIR development process, I’ve maintained a FHIR server at http://hl7connect.healthintersections.com.au/svc/fhir. Everyone in the community uses this for learning FHIR, testing their implementations, and it’s the de facto reference server (which was my intent).
As part of preparing the DSTU version of FHIR, I’ve open sourced the server. You can find it here: https://github.com/grahamegrieve/fhirserver.
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Game teaches risks of personal data exposure

Date December 6, 2013

Sim Sim Wissgott

Sexual orientation, private debt, medical records, even your favourite ice cream flavour: do you know much of this personal information is out there and available for sale?
And what if it could affect your job applications, whether you can rent a house or how high your insurance premium will be?
A new Austrian-designed online game titled Data Dealer, set for launch this week, hopes to make people a little more aware of their exposure to these risks, even if at a minimum it prompts them to switch off the GPS application on their smartphones.
-----

Bio pen prototype will help surgeons rebuild bone material directly on to the body

Date December 5, 2013

Angela Thompson

A hand-held ''bio pen'' developed in Wollongong will allow surgeons to draw regenerating bone material directly on to the body.
The development enables customised implants to be created at the time of surgery, eliminating the need to harvest cartilage and grow it for weeks in a lab as a replacement for damaged or diseased material.
On Wednesday researchers from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, at the University of Wollongong unveiled a prototype of the BioPen.
-----

New clinician user guide expected to raise eHealth accessibility

Dr John Aloizos AM is used to people calling up for advice. The busy Brisbane GP has been at the forefront of eHealth implementation for many years and in his part-time role of Senior Clinical Governance Advisor for NeHTA , he’s in a great position to make sure the new clinical user guide answers most of questions that doctors have around implementation.
The second version of NeHTA’s “eHealth Clinician's User Guide” was released last week targeted to medical practices (specifically GPs and private specialists).
Dr Aloizos says this guide is particularly useful for doctors, because it covers all of eHealth,  not just a particular facet, such as the PCEHR or secure messaging.
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Microsoft, University of Melbourne join forces on Natural User Interface

November 5, 2013
University of Melbourne is now home to the world’s first Natural User Interface (NUI) research centre.
The three-year, $8 million project comes as a result of a partnership between the Victorian state government, Microsoft and the University of Melbourne.  
The Microsoft Centre for Social Natural User Interface Research serve as a major development hub for new social interactive technologies.
-----

NBN connections available, but take up slow

Date December 5, 2013 - 3:32PM

Lucy Battersby

From 255,253 premises passed by fibre in brownfields, 78,028 were unable to get a connection.
Two thirds of the households that could connect to the national broadband network have not done so, according to new weekly figures released by NBN Co.
Nationally, 380,044 premises have been covered by the government-owned company since the project started in 2009, with about 120,800 households or businesses actively using it. Fibre optic cable accounts for 60 per cent of the active connections, satellite 36 per cent and fixed wireless 4 per cent.
The interim satellite broadband service offered by NBN Co since late 2011 has been so popular that it has reached capacity in Victoria and was nearing capacity in other states. Rural households that missed out have to wait until NBN Co launches its satellites in 2015.
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Dementia patients first to benefit from pain tool

DEMENTIA patients will be the first to benefit from a new electronic pain assessment tool based on automated facial recognition technology.
The Electronic Pain Assessment Tool aims to automate part of the process of pain assessment in patients who are not able to communicate because they have advanced dementia.
Its creators are also planning applications for babies and infants. The tool is being developed by Curtin University, in Western Australia, and is based on Swiss company nViso's facial recognition software.
Curtin University School of Pharmacy head Jeff Hughes said there was tremendous subjectivity in the assessment of pain in patients who have dementia.
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Healthdirect slammed after infant death

5th Dec 2013
THE AMA (WA) has criticised the Healthdirect hotline, describing it as "not cost-effective" after a coroner found a six-month-old baby who died of pneumococcal meningitis could have survived if she had been taken to hospital sooner.
Allegra Amelie Scafidas became ill on 28 April, 2010. Her mother, Nhon Vo, called the federal government-backed Healthdirect medical advice service and was told the baby probably had a stomach virus and she should call back if the baby's temperature increased to 39.5°C.
The following morning, an ambulance rushed Allegra to Princess Margaret Hospital after Ms Vo noticed she was grunting, had turned blue around the mouth, her skin was yellow and a rash had developed on her thighs. The baby died a week later.
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Pay up or your data dies: email 'ransom' rife

DEVASTATING malware that makes users' computer files unreadable until they pay a hefty ransom has begun infiltrating Australian computers after wreaking havoc in Britain and the US.
The so-called "ransomware", known as CryptoLocker, silently encrypts files on Windows computers, along with files on any connected network storage or USB devices, rendering them unreadable.
Once the encryption process finishes, it tells users to pay a ransom, which so far has been $100, $300 or two bitcoins, currently worth about $2400.
Users become infected when they open email attachments from what appear legitimate sources such as delivery firm FedEX and anti-virus providers Symantec and McAfee.
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Windows 8 a certifiable flop

Date December 3, 2013 - 3:24PM

Will Oremus

ANALYSIS
"You'll Hate Windows 8," my former colleague Farhad Manjoo predicted last June. He was right.
And this isn't just a matter of a difficult transition period, in which people initially resist a new interface before ultimately embracing it, as Microsoft's Steve Sinofsky predicted.
A year after it was released, Microsoft's new operating system is a certifiable flop.
Just how bad are the numbers? There are two obviously relevant points of comparison for Windows 8's adoption figures, and they're both so bad that it's very difficult to say which is worse.
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Enjoy!
David.