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
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Quite a busy week with the news of the loss of the Qld Health DG to the ongoing hospital software saga being on top. RTPM was also a feature with its non-progress.
We have also seen releases of a lot of new apps and software changes in Health Departments.
The 30th Anniversary of the internet in OZ also gets a mention.
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Queensland Health boss resigns amid hospital software rollout issues
By Stuart Layt
June 25, 2019 — 5.43pm
Queensland Health director-general Michael Walsh has announced he will resign, amid ongoing issues related to the rollout of new hospital software.
Health Minister Steven Miles on Tuesday afternoon issued a media release announcing Mr Walsh would step down from his role in September, thanking him for his work.
“He has rebuilt frontline services, hired doctors and nurses and paramedics, and planned a massive hospital building program,” Mr Miles said in the statement.
“We have a world class, universal, free health system that all Queenslanders can be proud of, and Michael has been a big part of rebuilding that.”
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Online tool launched to help parents prevent food allergies
By Rachel Clun
June 24, 2019 — 12.00am
Jenny Ayoub’s son Oscar was just nine-months-old when she discovered just how serious his dairy allergy was.
After he was accidentally exposed to baby food containing a small amount of cheese, Oscar developed anaphylaxis - a severe allergic reaction that can be deadly.
"He couldn’t breath, he was choking, he was crying but it was hoarse, we just had to call an ambulance and wait,” Ms Ayoub said. "Life changed dramatically after that."
A national health campaign launched on Monday aims to help prevent more stories like Oscar’s.
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New feedAustralia mobile app launched, designed to prevent rising child obesity levels
by Freya Lucas June 28
The Commonwealth Department of Health and feedAustralia have collaborated to design a new data-driven app which aims to prevent the increasing rate of childhood obesity and promote healthy eating amongst Australia’s youngest citizens who attend child care.
The feedAustralia will be formally launched by the Commonwealth Department of Health and feedAustralia this month, seamlessly integrating feedAustralia’s database of over 200 dietitian recipes and 2,000 ingredients with established nutrient profiles and serve recommendations to make recipes and nutritional information available to parents of children enrolled in child care services that are currently using feedAustralia’s online menu planning tool.
The feedAustralia initiative provides children’s services with a free online menu planning tool and nutrition education program to help them improve the delivery of food and drinks to the children in their care, in alignment with the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
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Crossing borders
There is a “pressing need” for real-time prescription monitoring in NSW, says coroner, following a man’s death after buying opioids in both ACT and NSW
NSW needs to urgently join Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT in implementing real-time prescription monitoring, the ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker has said following another opioid-related death.
Jay Alan Paterson, 43, died in 4 September 2017 at Calvary Public Hospital in Canberra after experiencing a polypharmacy overdose related to opioid painkillers.
Mr Paterson had injured his knee and had extensive surgery in 2007 and 2008, for which he was prescribed Endone and OxyContin for the first time, as well as Quilonum and Stilnox to assist with sleep.
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Doctors warned that discussing euthanasia over the phone is a crime
Health minister warns assisted dying can only be discussed in person
27th June 2019
By Kemal Atlay
Doctors in Victoria are being warned they could be breaking federal laws against inciting suicide if they discuss euthanasia with patients in phone or video calls.
Victoria’s health authorities announced on Wednesday that they had begun contacting all doctors certified to participate in its voluntary assisted dying scheme to advise them to only discuss the subject with patients in person.
Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos said the warning followed legal advice that any “electronic” discussions about accessing voluntary assisted dying could result in doctors falling foul of a federal law against inciting or counselling someone into suicide via a carriage service.
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GPs are the future and radiologists are 'toast', says tech billionaire
GPs will use expertise in AI to co-ordinate care, predicts Vinod Khosla
25th June 2019
Radiologists will be “toast” in 10 years, while oncologists will be replaced by GPs using artificial intelligence (AI), according to a prominent American venture capitalist and technologist.
GPs fare better in a future envisioned by billionaire Vinod Khosla, who believes AI will eventually eliminate the need for work, with more knowledgeable, higher-skilled professionals the most vulnerable to replacement during the transition period.
“Radiologists are toast. They shouldn’t be a job,” Mr Khosla told a conference for science and technology start-ups in Toronto, Canada, earlier this month.
“I will go even further to say any radiologist who plans to practise in 10 years will be killing patients every day.
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My health: consumers empowered by sharing medical ‘selfies’
Taking medical ‘selfies’ and sharing them with a doctor empowers and reassures healthcare consumers, and can improve doctor-patient relationships, a two-part QUT-led study has found.
- Former medical photographer Dr Kara Burns conducted the research as part of her PhD through the QUT Business School
- To gauge experiences with and attitudes to consumer-generated health photographs, Dr Burns first interviewed 30 patients, clinicians, and carers
- The second study was a pilot trial with parents taking photos of their children’s surgical wounds after they had undergone laparoscopic appendectomy at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. 26 parents completed the study, receiving training and then taking photos every two days and emailing the photos to the hospital so that surgeons could review healing
- Parents said it improved their confidence in and satisfaction with the medical service, and taking the photos was a useful reminder for them to check how the surgical sites were healing
Dr Burns said the findings from the photographic trial supported conclusions drawn from the interview study.
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New calculator predicts which doctors will receive complaints
The upgraded PRONE algorithm predicts risk for multiple health professions
17th June 2019
A new and apparently improved calculator that predicts which doctors will be subject to repeat patient complaints has been developed with funding from AHPRA.
In 2015, researchers unveiled the PRONE scale that rated doctors’ chances of being subject to a future complaint in the next two years.
It was based on a doctor’s specialty, their gender, the number of complaints (substantiated or not) they had previously received and the recency of those complaints.
The same team has created the PRONE-HP algorithm, an upgraded version that aims to predict the risk for multiple health professions.
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SA Health hunts for inaugural e-health chief
Exec charged with leading EPAS overhaul.
South Australia’s Health department has begun searching for its first-ever chief digital health officer to take charge of the state’s new electronic medical record project.
The state government agreed to create the new senior executive level position earlier this year as part of its plan to overhaul of the infamous electronic patient administration system (EPAS).
The reset was prompted by an interdependent review that found “major changes” were needed to improve the system, which had suffered delays, usability issues and cost overruns since being introduced in 2013.
The review recommended the existing Allscripts software underpinning the electronic medical record and patient administration systems should be improved instead of ditching the systems altogether
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Australia & Indonesia Bringing Digital Disruption to the Health Services Sector
Admin June 28, 2019
With rapid advances in computing power, connectivity, mobility, and data storage capacity, digital technologies offer great opportunity in relation to the delivery of health services. Better use of data and technology can also help people live healthier, happier and more productive lives by giving them greater control and better access to information and services through digital channels.
However, with benefits there are also risks and many factors that need to be considered from both the public policy and commercial perspective.
The Australian Embassy Indonesia’s Benefits and Risks of Digital Disruption in the Health Services Sector Forum brought together a group of government and industry experts to discuss the issues, challenges and opportunities that face government and the private sector in both countries.
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Monday, 24 June 2019 12:22
Health insurer nib launches Skill for Amazon Alexa
Health insurance company nib is claiming a first for the Australian health insurance industry with the launch of nib Skill for Amazon Alexa, which is aimed at better connecting members to local health providers and health insurance information.
According to nib, with thousands of health providers across Australia, ranging from GPs and surgeons to dentists, many Australians find it difficult to navigate the health system and find the right provider.
Using voice recognition technology, nib says with Alexa both members and consumers will be able to ask Alexa to help locate a specific healthcare provider in their area, and also provide a daily health tip and assist with questions about their general health insurance information.
nib’s chief information officer Brendan Mills said by using the latest in technology they were able to create a simple way for consumers to access the information they need, just by asking “Alexa, launch nib”.
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myRyman electronic care system deployed to 3,500 residents' rooms
Tuesday, 25 June 2019
eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
Ryman Healthcare has built its own electronic care planning system that runs on 3,500 tablets deployed in residents’ rooms across its residential aged-care villages.
The myRyman application has removed paperwork for both care planning and rostering and improved staff and resident satisfaction.
The $20+ million project has seen wi-fi deployed across all Ryman’s villages and the organisation’s IT team grow from three to 60 people since 2015, when work first started.
Clinical nurse specialist Victoria Brevoort says myRyman directs the care delivered in a resident’s room.
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DIY solution turns insulin pump into an artificial pancreas
Around the world a community of people with diabetes are modifying medical devices to make them function like our bodies do.
Dalvin Brown
Jun 29, 2019 — 12.00am
Earlier this year Meg Green meticulously followed online instructions for reprogramming an insulin pump. Why? To make the small, computerised device smarter by giving it the capability to adjust itself to act as an artificial external pancreas.
It worked and unlocked a world free of the constant blood sugar monitoring and insulin adjusting that had been routine for the 26-year-old with Type 1 diabetes.
“I went out for drinks, and the pump automatically knew how much insulin to give me. I was stable all night,” Green says about the device. “It was amazing, I just wanted to cry.”
Diabetes treatment has come a long way over the past few years as technology has evolved. The professional medical community has developed gadgets equipped with sensors and wireless connectivity that can track blood sugar levels. There’s tech that remotely connects patients with healthcare providers and even wearables that can deliver medication into the body.
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Microsoft, WA Health working to deploy Office 365 Software
Nathan Eddy | 25 Jun 2019
Technology giant Microsoft is working to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Australia’s Health Support Services organization through the deployment of its Office 365 software to 45,000 staff in 500 sites across the state.
The HSS serves as the WA health system’s shared services arm providing cyber security, storage and application support, central computing power and connectivity for all of WA Health.
The intent is to make Office 365, currently being piloted, available to all WA Health employees by the middle of next year – a transformation program that will see most workloads move from on premises data centres into the cloud.
"Our model for the future of compute and storage is going to be hybrid-cloud, with the majority probably in private cloud, and increasing over the coming years in managed public cloud services," sai Holger Kaufmann, chief information officer at HSS for WA Health, in a Microsoft blog post regarding the announcement.
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Vic Health boots Lotus Notes for Office 365
Completes year-long shift.
Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services has finally ditched Lotus Notes for email and calendar, ending two decade of reliance on the platform.
The year-long migration to Microsoft Office 365 was completed this month after the last of the department’s 11,500 staff jumped ship.
Chief information officer Steve Hodgkinson said in a LinkedIn post this week that the successful move had taken place over a 45-week period using a “structured division-by-division migration”.
He said the approach, which involved “over 300 training sessions and 120 executive meetings and adoption workshops”, was taken as the shift had spanned 63 locations across the state.
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26 June 2019
ASX ANNOUNCEMENT
ASX ANNOUNCEMENT
Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust renews Patientrack contract
Adelaide, South Australia – Alcidion Group Ltd (ASX:ALC) today announces it has signed a 5-year product licence renewal agreement with Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust for Patientrack licensing and support for an additional five years, to 2024. The total value of the renewal is $970K.
Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust first implemented Patientrack in 2012, making it one of the longest-serving users of the software. This is the second time it has renewed its contract.
The platform was initially deployed following a successful competitive tender in 2011, and the system is live in 68 wards across the trust’s three hospitals.
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Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust first implemented Patientrack in 2012, making it one of the longest-serving users of the software. This is the second time it has renewed its contract.
The platform was initially deployed following a successful competitive tender in 2011, and the system is live in 68 wards across the trust’s three hospitals.
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26 Jun 2019 9:49 AM
PSA calls for timely implementation of real-time prescription monitoring in SA
The recent South Australian Government Budget announcement to implement a real-time prescription monitoring system (RTPM) is a good step forward, but the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) calls on the government to ensure it is given high priority.
PSA SA/NT Branch President Robyn Johns urged the SA Government to follow through on this Budget commitment to help improve the health of South Australians.
"Real-time prescription monitoring was included in the state's 2018-19 Budget but as yet we haven't seen any progress,” she said.
"The 2019-20 Budget commitment of $4 million dollars to implement the system is very promising. However, timely implementation is crucial.”
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PSA SA/NT Branch President Robyn Johns urged the SA Government to follow through on this Budget commitment to help improve the health of South Australians.
"Real-time prescription monitoring was included in the state's 2018-19 Budget but as yet we haven't seen any progress,” she said.
"The 2019-20 Budget commitment of $4 million dollars to implement the system is very promising. However, timely implementation is crucial.”
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Fax machines are being kept on life support by Canberra's health system despite calls for change
By Elise Scott
June 23, 2019
Picture this: Doctors loitering near fax machines waiting for a piece of paper to be spat out, while highly qualified surgeons stand by landline telephones, anticipating a call after beeping a pager.
It conjures up images of a 1990s hospital-themed television drama, but it is the 2019 reality inside Canberra's health system.
Key points:
- Fax machines are still common within ACT Health services
- The National Digital Health strategy aims to phase out fax machines
- ACT Health say involving specialists will be a "slow and steady" process
Despite the ACT's hospitals deploying increasingly sophisticated medical equipment to treat patients, their communication methods have not caught up.
In fact, doctors and other medical staff frequently send and receive referrals by the humble fax machine.
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ACT govt digital strategy ineffective for IT planning, audit finds
As critical systems cracks emerge.
The ACT government has been told to improve its strategic IT planning efforts after the territory's audit office labelled its attempts to do so through the 2016 digital strategy ineffective.
Auditor-general Michael Harris on Friday identified shortcomings with IT strategic planning [pdf] at both the whole of government level and across the government’s seven directorates.
It comes just months after the territory’s strategic board identified one in five critical government systems as “not fit for purpose” and requiring immediate investment.
The audit found a series of initiatives to improve whole of government IT strategic planning through the territory’s key IT planning document “have not been effective”.
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Thursday, 27 June 2019 09:00
Amazon Web Services signs whole-of-govt deal with Canberra
Amazon Web Services has signed a whole-of-government deal with the Federal Government, enabling federal, state and territory agencies, as well as public universities and publicly-owned companies to use AWS Cloud services.
Agencies would now be able to use all AWS services in any of the company's 66 availability zones in 21 global regions, a statement from the company said on Thursday.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said: "Government agencies regularly engage AWS services, each with separate contracts. The new arrangement represents an opportunity to provide cost reductions through efficiencies of scale.
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Tuesday, 25 June 2019 18:43
New infosec rules for banks, other APRA-regulated entities from 1 July
Banks and other businesses regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will have to abide by a new set of rules governing information security, including cyber crime, from 1 July.
Under the new rules, released on Tuesday, the board of an APRA-regulated entity is ultimately responsible for the information security of the entity. The board will also be held responsible for any third parties and related entities that are brought in to manage security.
The guide, titled Prudential Practice Guide CPG 234 Information Security, replaces the older CPG 234 Management of Security Risk in Information and Information Technology.
The APRA also released a letter to industry about submissions made on the draft guide which was released in March, emphasising the need to maintain oversight of all third parties who manage information security on behalf of a business.
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5G will be faster than 4G, but at what price?
Jun 25, 2019 — 12.00am
Slower-than-advertised download speeds aren't going to get in the way of Australians adopting 5G mobile phones in a hurry, a new study has found.
5G, a mobile phone networking technology that promises much faster connections than current 4G networks, is set to be so popular with consumers it will easily outpace 4G in terms of its initial adoption, the Telsyte Australian Mobile Services Market Study 2019 found.
Where it took 4G about five years to reach 15 million "Services in Operation" (SIOs), 5G should get there in just four years, the Telsyte study found.
The telecommunications consultancy said it conducted interviews with 1025 Australians over the age of 16, and found that one in four of them have been delaying an upgrade to their mobile phone, so they could move to 5G when it becomes available.
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Tuesday, 25 June 2019 11:15
Slow NBN? We have the solution, says Huawei Australia official
A Huawei Australia official has used his address to a 5G Business Summit in Sydney to push his employer's wares as the solution to the slow NBN connection issue that many Australians face, through the medium of 5G fixed wireless.
David Soldani, the company's chief technology officer and a former Nokia tech chief, told Tuesday's summit that if the government did not use 5G fixed wireless to service areas where the NBN was in many cases proving to be slower than ADSL, it risked leaving hundreds of thousands of Australians waiting for bytes to be transferred over the network.
“As the completion of the national broadband network comes into view, it’s time to face a very simple fact: the NBN project has failed and Australians need to stop expecting NBN Co to deliver high-speed broadband to all Australians – it is just not going to happen,” he told delegates.
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Government faces fears it will lose its shirt on NBN
Jun 26, 2019 — 5.57pm
The federal government insists a $19.5 billion loan it extended to NBN Co will be repaid despite an Australian National Audit Office report casting doubts on the financial projections and its ability to repay the taxpayer-funded debt.
The viability of the NBN is under fresh focus after a senior executive at Chinese telecommunications equipment provider Huawei derided the $51 billion initiative as a failure on Tuesday.
Findings of the audit office's assessment of various government spending initiatives were published earlier this month in a report that classified the chances that the NBN's financial statements could be materially misstated as "high".
It also criticised an apparent lack of oversight and risk assessment in extending the $19.5 billion loan facility, saying the Communications Department had not established the practices necessary to manage the risks associated with it.
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NBN Co launches ‘solution finder', new wholesale discount bundles
June 25, 2019
National broadband network provider NBN Co has launched a “solution finder” online tool which it says is designed to help businesses find the right broadband plan for their needs.
The availability of the new tool, which NBN Co suggests will help businesses understand the type of solution they should discuss with their retail service provider, and was created in response to “extensive research with Australian businesses and service providers that revealed most businesses are not sure what business products and service attributes they need for their unique business demands”.
And to support the launch of its finder tool NBN Co has also launched a dedicated page on its website, which will go live this afternoon, designed to help businesses find the right solution.
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Telstra urges NBN to slash wholesale prices
- 12:00AM June 25, 2019
NBN Co has its work cut out on bringing down broadband prices for consumers after Telstra boss Andrew Penn warned the latest consultation process was unlikely to deliver the required cuts in wholesale prices charged by the company.
While Mr Penn has welcomed a review of the pricing structure, he told The Australian that tinkering around the edges was unlikely to take the pressure off the retail service providers.
“It’s fantastic that NBN Co is reviewing the structure and we welcome that but the only caution I would have is that wholesale prices don’t need to come down by $2 but by about $20,” he said.
“The way the prices are today, especially relative to the wholesale price we charge on a regulated basis, retail prices just have to go up.
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'The NBN project has failed': Huawei executive scathing of $51b spend
By Jennifer Duke
June 25, 2019 — 12.00am
A senior Australian Huawei executive has launched a scathing attack on the government's management of the National Broadband Network describing the $51 billion infrastructure project as a "catastrophe" that had failed to deliver.
In a blog post to be released on Tuesday Huawei Technologies Australia chief technology officer David Soldani, a former global head of 5G for Nokia, derided the performance of the NBN saying it simply had not delivered high-speed broadband.
"Australia has somehow managed to invest $51 billion on a network that can’t even deliver 50Mbps to around one million of its fixed-broadband end-user premises," the post claims, listing 200,000 homes on fibre-to-the-node technology that cannot get 25Mbps speeds.
"The NBN project has failed and Australia needs to stop expecting NBN Co to deliver high-speed broadband to all Australians – it is just not going to happen."
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NBN Co connects Parliament House with FTTB
By Ry Crozier on Jun 26, 2019 12:48PM
“Fitting” that inhabitants can experience the network.
NBN Co has brought Parliament House in Canberra onto its network with a fibre-to-the-basement installation.
The network builder said today that it had put an FTTB cabinet in the building’s basement that was fed with a “diverse fibre feed comprising multiple fibre feeds from the NBN access network backbone”.
The architecture was intended to keep parliament online in the event one of the fibre links was disconnected or damaged.
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First packets transmitted on Internet Down Under 30 years ago
Sunday marks 30 years since the first packets were transmitted on the Internet in Australia. The network came to Australia because of a recognition by the Australian Vice Chancellors' Committee, now Universities Australia, that the country was suffering a serious brain drain as many researchers were leaving the country.
Peter Elford, director of Government Relations at Australia's Academic and Research Network, and the second employee of the academic network, detailed some of the initial history to Angus Griffin, director, customer relations at AARNet, recently.
Elford said it was a genuine brain drain because many facilities in Australia were not up to world standards. "In particular, there was this new thing called the Internet in America which was centred around what was then called the National Science Foundation network or the NSF.net and it was clear that it was changing the way people did science, the way they accessed big resources like supercomputers, Elford said.
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Friday, 28 June 2019 07:59
In world first, astronomers track location of one-off burst of cosmic radio waves
An international Australian-led team of astronomers has achieved a world first by using the CSIRO's new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia to determine the exact location of a powerful one-off burst of cosmic radio waves.
Three of the world's big optical telescopes — Keck in Hawaii, Gemini South and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, both in Chile — then imaged the galaxy from which the burst originated.
“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007,” CSIRO lead author Dr Keith Bannister said in a statement on Friday.
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Enjoy!
David.
