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."

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Pre - Budget Review Of The Health Sector - 22nd April 2014.

As we head towards the Budget in Early to Mid-May 2014 I thought It would be useful to keep a closer eye than usual on what was being said regarding what we might see coming out of the Budget.
According to the Australian Parliament web site Budget Night will be on Tuesday 13th May, 2014.
Here are some of the more interesting articles I have spotted this week.
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Disability pension attack

Date April 19, 2014 - 11:59PM

Jonathan Swan

National political reporter

Thousands of disability pensioners would be examined by independent doctors to see whether they are still entitled to their pensions, under dramatic changes being considered by Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews. Mr Andrews, who is overhauling the $15 billion-a-year disability support pension – which he considers the most troublesome welfare entitlement – also said changes to the pension could begin as soon as the May budget.
"Potentially we could say, right, back to a certain point we'll just reassess people," Mr Andrews said. "The question then is how far back would you go in doing some reassessments of them?
"You could probably go back a couple of years," he said, "[but] if someone's been on the DSP for five or six years, the chances of them being assessed again as being capable of working is fairly remote."
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New Premier Mike Baird shares his private views

Date April 20, 2014

Kirsty Needham

State Politics Editor

Premier Mike Baird wants to push ahead with the privatisation of public hospitals, saying Sydney's dilapidated health facilities are in need of upgrading.
The privatisation model used in Western Australia, where non-clinical staff were privately employed and public hospitals were privately built and managed, could provide a ''fantastic opportunity'' to give NSW patients the best services, he said.
Don't be afraid of the private sector. 
Mr Baird said he was concerned by the ageing of NSW's health facilities. ''The quality of doctors and nurses is world-class and they need world-class facilities,'' he said.
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Pension age on fast path to 70

  • DENNIS SHANAHAN POLITICAL EDITOR
  • The Australian
  • April 19, 2014 12:00AM
The rising pension age. Source: TheAustralian
THE pension age will be pushed out to 70 in next month’s budget and may come into effect as early as 2029 under a razor-gang proposal to accelerate Labor’s plan to raise the pension age from 65 to 67.
There are no plans to cut the existing pension but consideration is being given to changing the rate of indexation for age-pension payments.
Under a “live option” being reviewed by the Abbott government’s expenditure review committee, the planned rises in entitlement age for the pension, between 2017 and 2023, would continue from 2023 to 2029. Every worker entitled to an age pension born since 1959 would be affected by the new retirement age of 70, effective in 2029.
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Doctors delay vote on unseen contracts

Date April 16, 2014 - 11:05PM

Amy Remeikis

State political reporter

The state's senior medicos have so little trust in the government, doctors have refused to vote on whether they will even consider the new contracts, without seeing them first.
But while resignations have still not been ruled out, doctors at Wednesday's 'Pineapple Group' meeting did vote to take the threat of mass resignations off the table - for now.
But many questioned why they were still being asked to accept contracts which left them "worse off" than they were in November, when the government first stated its intentions to change doctors' employment conditions.
Lawyer Luke Forsyth, who formed part of the doctors' taskforce negotiating team, said he believed "this is as far as we can get it [the contracts], given the current government's ideologies in respect to this".
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Dutton compares Medicare to Kingswood

16th Apr 2014
LETTING private health insurers loose on primary care may be the answer to upgrading Australia’s outdated ‘Holden Kingswood-era’ Medicare system, according to Health Minister Peter Dutton.
Writing in the journal Health Voices, published by the Consumers Health Forum, Mr Dutton gave his strongest indication yet that private insurers may be allowed to become more involved in GP care, saying there was little argument against such reform.
In his editorial, Mr Dutton likened Medicare to a 1980s Holden Kingswood. He said both were successful in their day but neither were able to meet public needs or expectations in 2014.
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Dutton blasts public sector

HEALTH Minister Peter Dutton has narrowed his reform gaze to the services provided to concession card holders and the chronically ill, believing only the private sector has the “bold new ideas” needed to make the budget sustainable.
In an editorial written for the Consumers Health Forum journal, Mr Dutton continued his call for the private sector to be more involved in primary care — some insurers have already moved to better manage the services available to members — and also criticised the state of the public hospital system.
“Dramatic improvements in productivity and efficiencies that are part and parcel of the private sector are essential,” Mr Dutton wrote. “The public sector can no longer be shackled by archaic practices that deliver the waiting lists that leave tens of thousands of Australians in pain and unable to access a service for extended periods of time.”
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How Joe Hockey should spread the budget pain

Stephen Anthony
Macroeconomics’ latest Budget Bulletin released on Monday tells the story of the fiscal challenges facing the Abbott government and in particular Treasurer Joe Hockey – and some of the options he has to meet those challenges.
The legacy of a decade of fiscal largesse by both sides of politics is a significant budget structural deficit that will require remedial action to correct.
The key reason the structural deficit will not necessarily correct itself is that there is significant spending growth just beginning at the end of the forward estimates period.
This is due to programs such as Disability Care, commitments such as raising defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product, increasing the Commonwealth’s funding share of public hospitals, and matching Gonski education funding. Then there are longer term spending pressures related to population ageing and the environment.
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Hockey budget to raise taxes and charges

Laura Tingle Political editor
The Abbott government plans to raise taxes and charges in the May 13 budget, as well as cut spending, as it scrambles to rapidly return to surplus.
However, it will argue that any revenue hikes now will be designed with an eye to giving it room to offer major tax reforms at the 2016 election.
The move is likely to be met with outrage by the opposition, given that the Coalition is in the process of repealing Labor revenue measures including the carbon price and mining tax.
Government sources say there will be “nothing pretty” about the revenue increases, but they will be made in an environment where the government believes the scope to take an axe to ­welfare spending in the short term is constrained by the impact this would have on the economy.
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Health Minister Peter Dutton vows to unshackle public hospitals

Date April 15, 2014 - 6:09PM

Dan Harrison

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

Health Minister Peter Dutton has declared public hospitals are "shackled by archaic practices" and must embrace efficiencies.
In a piece written for the Health Voices journal published by the Consumers Health Forum of Australia, Mr Dutton wrote that the healthcare system must "be open to the innovation and the bold new ideas that come from the private sector".
"In our public hospitals dramatic improvements in productivity and efficiencies that are part and parcel of the private sector are essential," Mr Dutton wrote in the article, which was published on Wednesday.
"The public sector can no longer be shackled by archaic practices that deliver the waiting lists that leave tens of thousands of Australians in pain and unable to access a service for extended periods of time."
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Dutton points to Medicare rejig

Joanna Heath
Health Minister Peter Dutton has given his strongest indication yet that Medicare will be overhauled in the May 13 budget by comparing the health system to an outdated Holden Kingswood.
In an opinion article published on Wednesday, Mr Dutton says private sector efficiencies must be introduced in the public hospital system, the primary care system needs to be improved, and private health insurers should be involved in the care of chronically ill patients.
It is the latest in a series of pronouncements by Mr Dutton in the lead-up to the budget, which have focused on the fiscal unsustainability of Medicare. He has hinted strongly at the introduction of patient payments for GP and emergency department visits.
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Avoiding hospitals and doctors the best cure for healthcare woes

Date April 15, 2014 - 11:45PM

John Dwyer

"There are a number of valid reasons for sick people to visit an emergency department."
The Coalition government has told us we need to have an “everything on the table” debate on how to rein in healthcare expenditure.
Yet signs of a vigorous debate are as hard to find as therapeutic molecules in a homeopathic preparation. In essence, we are being told we must pay more for our health programs while simultaneously denuding them of millions of dollars. 
The intellectual property underpinning the government’s plan is focused on the introduction of a co-payment of $6 when visiting a GP and, more recently, the introduction of a fee for visiting a hospital’s emergency department with a “GP problem”.
Virtually all commentators have rejected the co-payment idea as poor policy that would raise very little money. Hospital expenditure dwarfs Medicare spending yet our inadequate primary care infrastructure fuels one of our most telling statistics. About 600,000 admissions to hospital each year (at an average cost of $5000) could be avoided if we had the infrastructure to provide community based interventions in the three weeks prior to a hospitalisation. This would cost only $300 a person treating at a community health level, compared with $5000 for a hospitalisation.
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Mass doctor resignation threat off the agenda as doctors decide if their contracts suit them

AUSTRALIAN Medical Association Queensland president-elect Dr Shaun Rudd has endorsed the new individual doctors’ contracts, declaring the “one-sideness” has “dramatically changed”.
Speaking on ABC radio this morning, Dr Rudd said while he had no indication of the number of public sector doctors considering signing the new contracts, he would be “very surprised if it wasn’t the vast majority”.
“We are recommending … that these contracts are a much better contract than we initially started with,” he told ABC radio.
“As we’ve always said all along that individuals have to (make that individual decision) but we are in a position to believe they are reasonable.”
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Qld doctors' contract dispute breakthrough

15th Apr 2014
QUEENSLAND doctors are on the verge of agreeing to move onto individual contracts, ending one of the longest and most bitter industrial disputes during the Newman government so far.
A handful of union and lobby groups have reached an in-principle agreement after Health Minister Lawrence Springborg made a raft of concessions over the last month.

Spokesman and president of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers' Federation Tony Sara said the amendments will guarantee patient safety is not compromised to meet bureaucratic needs.
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Super clinics little more than a sick joke on the taxpayer

WE were told they would be super. Bulk-billed services, out-of-hours care, one-stop shops for medical and allied health services. And all located in areas of need where the provision of general practitioner services was clearly inadequate.
Labor took the dream of GP Super Clinics to the 2007 election. Notwithstanding the wholly unimpressive start to the program, the dream was re-promised in the 2010 election.
There were to be 64 clinics in all. They would relieve the pressures on public hospitals. They would also cater for the special needs of patients with chronic conditions. What was not to love about the GP Super Clinics?
As it turns out, quite a lot. In keeping with other Labor thought bubbles, the GP Super Clinic scheme has run over budget and over schedule. It has been a politically motivated shemozzle in which taxpayer funds have been frittered away in an almost completely uncontrolled fashion.
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Government urged to target seniors, families in budget cuts by economics group Macroeconomics

April 14, 2014
An economic forecaster is urging the Federal Government to "cut hard and cut early" in next month's budget, targeting seniors, families and businesses.
In its annual pre-budget forecast, Macroeconomics has backed the numbers in the Government's most recent fiscal update handed down in December.
The group is urging the Government to target the middle and upper classes with cuts to assistance to seniors and families with children, as well as corporate welfare.
A director at Macroeconomics, Stephen Anthony, has told the ABC the Government must act quickly.
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Hockey must spread the pain

The Australian Financial Review
Treasurer Joe Hockey has raised the prospect of increasing the retirement age and reviewing access to the aged pension as the critical May budget looms. Mr Hockey, speaking from Washington, has made it clear no one group can be immune from the tough decisions, such is the size and seriousness of the budget challenge facing the government and the nation.
Pensioners are already aware changes may include further increases in the retirement age and that pensions may be indexed to the inflation rate, rather than the existing, more generous system of indexing to percentage of male average wages.
But as this newspaper has noted before, it makes little sense for the government to talk about budget cuts and inflicting pain on different groups in the community, when it is also promising a $5.5 billion a year scheme to give new parents, younger taxpayers, up to $75,000 so that they can spend time looking after their children.
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Nurses to screen for bowel cancer in proposed overhaul

  • April 14, 2014 9:49AM
·         SUE DUNLEVY
·         News Corp Australia
NURSES would take over the job of screening for bowel cancer and administering low grade anaesthetics under a radical plan to save public hospitals $430 million a year.
The proposal from former secretary of the health department Stephen Duckett has been put to Health Minister Peter Dutton as he searches for ways to rein in the budget deficit.
Under the plan up to 17,000 nurse assistants would be employed to take over nurses roles in feeding and bathing patients, turning them in their beds and stocking medications.
These nurse assistants would receive their training on the job and they would be paid $49,000 a year, thirty per cent less than a registered nurse.
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Doctors ‘squandering’ skills cost hospitals $430m a year

April 14, 2014
Mark Ludlow
Australia’s public hospital system could save up to $430 million a year if doctors didn’t ‘squander’ time doing jobs that could be done by other staff members, a new report has found.
With health budgets under strain across the country, the Grattan Institute report warned hospital waiting times would get worse unless there was a significant shake-up to the way big hospitals are run.
It found there needed to be a more efficient allocation of resources in hospitals, including making sure highly trained medical specialists did not spend their time doing straightforward work.
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Budget pain to hit all: Hockey

Laura Tingle Political editor
Treasurer Joe Hockey says no group will be safe from cuts in the May budget, as he braces voters for potential changes to the age pension and tighter asset tests.
The ramping-up of the Treasurer’s pre-budget rhetoric came as he wound up a visit to Washington and ahead of a meeting of federal cabinet and its expenditure review committee in Canberra on Monday.
In a statement about the ­economic task facing not just the government but the country, if it wished to stay competitive, Mr Hockey said that real wages may fall in coming years and that pension rates could also fall, noting that 60 per cent of male workers in the US “have had a real cut in their incomes” in the past 40 years.
“We’ve been the beneficiaries of having real income increases. Now the pension is attached to male total average weekly earnings, which is a higher rate but it’s not always going to remain a higher rate. So we have to look at how sustainable pension increases are.”
The Treasurer said the budget “is not going to target any one particular group. Every Australian is going to be asked to contribute to the budget repair, including politicians, and it’s going to be as fair an ask as is possible under the circumstances.”
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Prepare for a retirement age of 70: Joe Hockey

GENERATION X Australians may have to keep working until the age of 70, Joe Hockey has warned.
In another indication that a further rise in Australia’s pension age is on the cards, the Treasurer, 48, said his contemporaries may have to keep working until their eighth decade.
Labor raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 from 2023.
“It may be that my generation has to work for an extra three years (to age of 70) and we need to redesign our systems to manage that fact, “ Mr Hockey told ABC TV from Washington.
“It will affect my generation. This doesn’t happen overnight.’’
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Joe Hockey confirms pension age could rise to 70

Date April 13, 2014 - 10:40AM

Gareth Hutchens and James Massola

Joe Hockey says Australia has no choice but to take tough decisions in the federal budget, giving his clearest signal yet the pension age will rise to 70 in the May budget and holding out the prospect of future governments not being able to afford medicine for sick children.
Fairfax Media reported on Saturday that a rise in the pension age to 70 was under "active consideration" by the government, while changes to the indexation of pensions to slow the rising cost of the payment could also be made.
On Sunday, Mr Hockey said his generation will have to work for longer because there will be serious future budgetary stresses from an ageing population.
“That’s certainly one of the issues that needs to be addressed,” Mr Hockey told the ABC’s Insiders.
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Comment:
The drumbeat suggesting a tough budget continues to build. The final report of the Commission of Audit (COA) has been handed to Government and as I predicted we are starting to see some hints and leaks.
Economically we now have the Treasurer as well as both the Reserve Bank Governor and the Secretary of The Treasury saying we have very serious budgetary problems - and we can be sure all three have seen the COA.
Rumour is there will be a public release this week - we will wait and watch.
If what we read here is correct it is pension age up, skill replacement, disability pension exclusions and less funds overall. That is enough to be going on with.
To remind people there is also a great deal of useful discussion here from The Conversation.
As usual - no real news on the PCEHR Review.
More next week.
David.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 21st April, 2014.

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

I thought there was enough bits of news around to make this useful.
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eHealth scheme considered for cuts

Joanna Heath
The Abbott government is considering ­publishing a review into the previous government’s eHealth scheme before the budget, prompting speculation the $1 billion program is in line for cuts.
Health Minister Peter Dutton has previously signalled his opposition to the scheme, which allows patients to opt-in to a personal electronic record of their medical history, calling the rollout under Labor a “scandal”.
The government was handed the results of the review in January this year, with its authors left in the dark about a release date. Freedom of information requests to obtain the report have been refused.
“We thought it was going to be mid-January, then mid-February, then April,” said panel member and Australian Medical Association ­president Steve Hambleton.
“eHealth is really on hold at the moment in Australia . . . everything is waiting on clarification as to the direction.”
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National eHealth Record

Date: Friday 9th May 2014
Location: Maroochydore Library, Cotton Tree
How will it affect you?
Join the team from Sunshine Coast Medicare Local as they provide a free information session on the National eHealth record. Learn how registering gives you the ability to share your vital health information.
Find out everything you need to know about the eHealth record including:
• privacy
• security
• access
• content
• how it can benefit yourself and your family.
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Skin in the Game

Australia’s Health Ministers (including Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton) all expressed strong support for the PCEHR last week during the Standing Council on Health (SCoH) meeting in Brisbane chaired by NSW Minister for Health and Medical Research Jillian Skinner.
“A commitment to the PCEHR came through very strongly from the Federal Minister,” Minister Skinner told eHealthspace this week.
“Everyone knows there is a review going on - that is publicly known, but that doesn’t mean that there’s any lack of commitment to eHealth records from the Federal Minister,” she said.
“He said - and we agreed - that it was important to work together on an ongoing commitment.”
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GPs slam new triage referral system

15 April, 2014 Paul Smith
GPs have savaged a referral system rolled out across WA, claiming patients are being referred to hospitals 100km or more away from where they live.
The Central Referral Service system was launched two months ago to cut the waiting lists plaguing the state's outpatient services.
It means GPs fill out a five-page application form, either online or on paper, which is then sent to a nurse triage unit that decides what hospital and service will treat a patient.
AMA WA president Dr Richard Choong (pictured), who practises in the city of Rockingham, said: "One of our patients was referred to a hospital. It was 110km away.
"It was a mystery why they decided to send the patient there.
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Digital dawn of a brave new medical world

PUBLISHED: 16 Apr 2014    Mark Eggleton
The healthcare sector is ripe for digital disruption globally, according to the global CEO of GE Healthcare, John Dineen.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, Dineen said the sector faces a tremendous increase in demand as populations are getting older and sicker with chronic diseases that are very complicated.
“A bow wave of demand (in developed economies) is heading towards us and governments don’t have a lot of money to throw at the problem, so the big question is, how do we finance and fund our healthcare systems which are already strained?” Dineen says.
He says healthcare systems around the world have always looked for clinical quality but now they need productivity and they need it fast.
“We have to ask for more from our healthcare system as the basics of health have changed and this change has only really come about in the last three to five years. We’re getting different demand signals from health providers and technology providers and that is: help us get more productive; help us get better access, higher quality, lower cost all at the same time – and that requires different behaviour.”
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Wikipedia hits help track flu spread

Date April 18, 2014 - 8:04PM

Dan Harrison

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

The number of hits recorded on Wikipedia articles could track the spread of flu and other illnesses faster than existing systems, research says.
Researchers in the United States have developed a highly accurate computer model for estimating levels of flu-like illness in the American population by analysing internet traffic on flu-related Wikipedia articles.
The research, published in PLOS Computational Biology on Friday, found the Wikipedia-based model estimated flu levels up to two weeks sooner than data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention became available. The Wikipedia-based model was also more accurate at estimating the timing of peak flu activity than Google Flu Trends, a service developed by the internet search giant that draws on Google search queries.
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Plug pulled on schools' disastrous Ultranet computer system

Date April 20, 2014

Farrah Tomazin

The Sunday Age's state political editor.

After $180 million in taxpayer funds and years of political angst, the most bungled computer system to hit Victorian schools has finally been switched off.
The state government has confirmed the IT experiment known as the Ultranet has officially ceased, ending one of the most controversial projects ever rolled out in public education.
The software was intended to transform the way students learn by providing parents with information about their child's lesson plans, giving teachers a place to collaborate and share their curriculum, and allowing students to set personal goals and get feedback online.
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Keep up to date on liver diseases

8th Apr 2014
THE iLiver app is useful for doctors to have at their fingertips, especially for those with a special interest in the liver.
iLiver was developed by the European Association for the Study of the Liver to provide updated information about liver disease. The app contains practical and relevant information concerning 22 liver conditions, ranging from acute liver failure to gallstones, the hepatitides, portal hypertension and Wilson’s disease.
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Digitise your records or perish

Date April 18, 2014 - 10:46AM

Drew Turney

Digitising records isn't a new area of business, but changes to privacy, the need for improved reporting and saving time and money are making it more important than ever that you get it right.
Take the government's eHealth initiative. Costing $1 billion since 2011, the program aims to centralise information about patients' medical history, making it available to providers to help with diagnoses. Though it's been reported eHealth has had mixed results, the impetus behind the program is that sharing information with other medical providers will save lives.
But it's about more than collecting customer profiles. If a 20-year-old signs up for a life insurance policy and the company is subsequently acquired or sold throughout the policyholder's life, figuring out which new company's product disclosure statement they signed can be a huge and potentially expensive challenge.
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#FHIR FAQs and Knowledge Base articles

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Grahame Grieve
HL7 has published a set of FAQs and knowledge base articles about FHIR, that cover questions about the following aspects of the FHIR specification:
  • Scope and Relationships
  • Specification
  • Architecture
  • Tooling and Support
  • Resource Design
  • Implementation Approach
  • Codes and Terminology
  • Implementation Details
  • Domain Questions
  • Security
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We bring together people who save lives and improve health outcomes. We are at the intersection of healthcare and technology. Come join us!
  • Be part of a close knit, growing and diversified community
  • 4-5 days per week with flexible hours (for the right candidate)
  • An achievement-focused, accomplishment-driven, innovative culture
  • Excellent career prospects - show initiative, deliver results and you will be given wings to fly
  • Parkville Precinct, North Melbourne location (or Sydney based for the right candidate)
  • Proposed start date: May 2014
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Human microchipping: I've got you under my skin

Date April 16, 2014

Iain Gillespie

Thousands of technology enthusiasts use it as the ultimate app, enabling them to lock and unlock their homes, cars, computers and mobile phones with a simple wave of a hand. But there's a catch: they must have a microchip inserted into their bodies.
The idea may seem weird, and painful, but human microchipping appears to appeal not only to amateurs, who call themselves biohackers, but also to governments, police forces, medical authorities and security companies.
It involves using a hypodermic needle to inject an RFID (radio-frequency identification) microchip, the size of a grain of rice, usually into the person's hand or wrist. The same kind of chip is used for tracking lost pets.
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Heart Attack!

By Steve Wilson for eHealthspace.org.
For the second time in as many months, a grave bug has emerged in core Internet security software. In February it was the "Goto Fail" bug in Apple devices that left web site security inoperable; now we have "Heartbleed", a flaw that leaves many secure web servers in fact open to attackers sniffing out passwords and keys.
"Heartbleed" is a flaw in an obscure low level feature of the "Transport Layer Security" (TLS) protocol. TLS has an optional feature dubbed "Heartbeat" which lets a computer connected in a secure session periodically test if the other computer is still alive. Heartbeat involves sending a request message with some dummy payload, and getting back a response with duplicate payload. The bug means the responding computer can be tricked into sending back a bigger dump of 64 kiloytes of memory. (For the technically minded, this error is qualitatively similar to a buffer overload; see also the OpenSSL Project description of the bug). A random grab of security data has a good chance of including passwords, credit card numbers and even TLS session keys. The bug is confined to the OpenSSL security library, where it was introduced inadvertently as part of some TLS improvements in late 2011.
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NBN Co seeks ‘early resolution’ of TPG fibre threat

If Telstra decided to compete with NBN Co infrastructure, there would be ‘significant implications’
The company in charge of rolling out and operating the National Broadband Network has called for a speedy resolution to the issue of infrastructure-based competition. NBN Co raised the spectre of cascading consequences from a decision to allow infrastructure-based competition in a submission to the Vertigan panel.
The NBN Panel of Experts — also known as the Vertigan panel after its chair, Michael Vertigan — has been charged by the government with conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN and a review regulation relating to the network and its rollout.
NBN Co has provided the panel with a supplementary submission that responds to issues raised by other parties in their responses to the Regulatory Framing Paper. The panel released Regulatory Framing Paper in February.
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Five Windows 8.1 features that mouse users will love

  • Nathan Olivarez-Giles
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • April 17, 2014 12:00AM
THE Windows 8.1 update is here, and for those who use a mouse and keyboard instead of a touch screen, it’s a vast improvement. Microsoft has tweaked its touch-centric operating system to be more click-friendly for those on laptop and desktop PCs. Many of the features are a nod to the past (such as being able to boot directly to the desktop), mirroring what Windows users are used to on Windows XP (rest in peace) and Windows 7.
If you have a Windows 8 or 8.1 computer, and want the update, you can either wait for it to automatically download and prompt you, or you can go into settings, click “update and recovery”, then select “Windows update”. That will get the process started, if it hasn’t started already. Now, here are five changes you need to know about.
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Enjoy!
David.