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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The Xmas torpor
has well and truly arrived and little seems to be happening. A few I did find
below!
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=55c0d1bf-02b4-44d4-9367-262a477a3cf9
Changes to TGA regulation of personal medical devices
Maddocks
Angela Wood
Australia December 2 2021
We
review the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s new framework for regulating
custom-made medical devices
In
brief
- On 25
February 2021, a new framework for regulating custom-made medical devices
(CMMDs)
in Australia commenced.
- The
framework includes a new definition for CMMDs and many previously exempt
CMMDs may now be required to be included in the Australian Register of
Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) before they can be
lawfully supplied in Australia.
- Manufacturers
and suppliers of CMMDs should assess their position to ensure they comply
with the new regulatory framework.
Background
Prior
to the amendments to the therapeutic goods laws in Australia, a CMMD was a
device made for a particular individual specifically in accordance with the
request of a health professional. The request was required to specify the
design characteristics or describe how the device was to be constructed. The
definition also encompassed a medical device used by a health professional
where the device met the special needs of the health professional’s practice.
While the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) was required
to be notified of the kinds of CMMDs to be manufactured and sold, CMMDs were
exempt from inclusion in the ARTG.
The
exemption was intended to only apply to ‘special cases’ in which there was no
medical device included in the ARTG that could meet the special needs of a
particular patient. However, between 2017 and 2019, the TGA consulted on
proposed changes to the medical device regulation framework in Australia and
found that the ease and low cost of preparing CMMDs had drastically decreased
over the last few years. As a result, the manufacture and supply of CMMDs had
grown exponentially. The TGA found that there had been an unexpected reliance
on the CMMD exemption in the regulatory framework increasing the risk profile
of CMMDs, from low to high, creating a need for more stringent regulatory
obligations.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/telehealth-items-expiry-date-looming/59497
9 December 2021
Telehealth items’ expiry date looming
MBS Telehealth
TheHill
By Leanne
Akiki
An announcement on the future of telehealth is expected in
coming weeks before the current item numbers are set to expire on 31
December.
Medicare-funded telehealth has seen general practice through
the pandemic, since its introduction in March 2020. But it’s looking more likely
that the federal government’s preference will be to restrict access to patients
who are enrolled at a practice.
At the Department of Health’s weekly briefing and Q&A
today, First Assistant Secretary, Covid-19 Primary Care Response Dr Lucas de
Toca said of the item numbers: “We understand it’s absolutely critical and the
government will be making an announcement very, very soon.”
In response to questions, the DoH told TMR that an
announcement on telehealth would be made before the expiry date of 31 December.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/why-alphabet-soup-discharge-summaries-menace
Why the alphabet soup in discharge summaries is a menace
With the typical summary containing 13 different short forms, GP
registrar Dr Anna Coghlan says confusion is inevitable
7th December 2021
By Geir O'Rourke
Dr
Anna Coghlan recently exposed the alphabet soup frequently
served up in hospital discharge summaries written for GPs.
As
a junior doctor and now a GP registrar in Brisbane, she was the lead researcher
on a recent study showing that a local hospital's typical discharge letter had
some 13 different abbreviations on average.
The
figure was identified after she and two colleagues trawled through
800 discharge summaries issued over a single week, with one example
containing 86 short forms.
AusDoc:
You found the average discharge summary contained 13 different
abbreviations and 17 short forms in total.
Dr
Coghlan: Yes, 13 seemed like a lot initially. But when you start reading
discharge summaries more closely, you realise just how ubiquitous abbreviations
are. That’s true of almost all medical documentation.
The
thing to keep in mind is that most won't be confusing. Things like GP and IV
can be useful as shorthand, and we aren’t suggesting there is any problem with
using abbreviations that everyone understands.
But
that isn’t always true, and many abbreviations are being used that are
downright confusing.
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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/aged-allied-health/article/how-ai-is-shaping-the-future-of-oral-wellness-444136447
How AI is shaping the future of oral wellness
By Dr Fadi Yassmin
Wednesday, 08 December, 2021
As technology continues to evolve at a rapid rate, what was
once the stuff of science fiction is now a daily reality for healthcare
practitioners across a wide range of fields. In the field of dentistry, artificial
intelligence (AI) is not just revolutionising patient care, it is also
providing us tools to create better outcomes for patients.
Put simply, AI uses machine learning to analyse, diagnose
and suggest the most appropriate treatment options. This technology works by
looking at new data and mapping it against the knowledge or similar data it has
accumulated from other patients.
As practitioners, we do this countless times every
day — drawing on our years of experience and training to diagnose a
problem and then determine the type of treatment that we believe will give the
best results. AI is able to do this faster and more accurately than any human.
It also has the advantage of being able to compare new patient data with
hundreds of thousands or even millions of similar cases — far more than a
humble human doctor could ever treat and remember in their lifetime.
While AI is unlikely to replace the expertise of a trained
healthcare professional, it has terrific potential to complement and support
the work we do in our practice. Perhaps even more significantly, it offers the
scope to transform the way we engage patients to participate in their own
treatment pathways.
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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/aged-allied-health/news/ai-tech-to-assist-clinicians-in-wound-assessment-and-care-176705056
AI tech to assist clinicians in wound assessment and care
Wednesday, 08 December, 2021
Coviu,
a telehealth spin-out from CSIRO, is developing a digital toolkit for
telehealth wound care alongside CSIRO, The University of Sydney, Australian Unity,
Western NSW Primary
Health Network and The
University of Technology Sydney.
The cost of chronic wounds is equivalent to more than $3.5
billion, approximately 2% of national healthcare expenditure, with more than
400,000 Australians estimated to suffer at any time.
The new suite of digital tools will provide a one-stop shop
for clinicians caring for wounds. Mobile imaging, powered by artificial
intelligence (AI), will allow practitioners to remotely analyse and monitor
wounds over time. From a video feed, clinicians will assess vital sign metrics,
such as a patient’s heart and respiratory rate.
With remote access to a greater breadth of wound data at the
click of a button the information will help practitioners make decisions about
how to manage wounds, including raising red flags when there are significant
changes which might indicate infection, the body’s reaction to the wound or a reaction
to medication.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/aussies-still-using-covidsafe-but-it-only-found-two-potential-contacts-during-lockdowns/
Aussies still using COVIDSafe but it only found two potential contacts
during lockdowns
Registrations for COVIDSafe bubbling along at thousands
per week with spikes whenever an outbreak occurs.
Written by Chris Duckett,
APAC Editor
on December 9, 2021 | Topic: Innovation
The Australian government's COVIDSafe app that costs around
AU$200,000 a month to keep running, only found two potential close contacts
of positive COVID cases in the period from 16 May to 15 November 2021.
During those six months, both Sydney and Melbourne were in
extended lockdowns with the highest daily COVID case numbers the country had
experienced in the entire pandemic, and much of the rest of Australia dipped in
and out of lockdown conditions.
In that timeframe, 13 people uploaded to the system, 330 new
handshakes were added, for a total of nine potential encounters.
Since the inception of the app, it has received 792 uploads,
1.65 million handshakes, and 2,829 potential contacts.
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https://itwire.com/deals/dell-technologies-to-provide-tech-equipment-for-ehealth-queensland.html
Friday, 03 December 2021 12:09
Dell Technologies to provide tech equipment for eHealth Queensland
By Kenn
Anthony Mendoza
Dell Technologies bags a contract with eHealth Queensland,
the information technology support service for Queensland Health, to provide
the state’s sixteen hospital and health services including workers in the
Department of Health with PCs, tablets, notebooks, workstations, all-in-ones,
rugged devices, and monitors.
The deal comes timely as Queensland Health standardises its
tech service.
The equipment will support over 90,000 healthcare employees
to render service to a population of more than five million.
Dell Technologies says the contract is under Queensland
Education’s DET SOA 84891 (Category One – Supply and Support of ICT Hardware)
and one of the largest commercial client deals for the company in Australia.
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https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/589600/Health-data-strategy-and-action-plan-released.htm
Health data strategy and action plan released
Thursday, 9 December 2021
NEWS
The Ministry of Health has released
a strategy and two-year action plan to improve the way health data is
collected, managed, shared and used.
Actions include establishing a national collections data service, developing
equity measures for data standards and creating ways for people to authorise
others to access their health information.
Ministry of Health deputy director-general data and digital, Shayne Hunter says
the health and disability system collects a lot of data but needs to be more
effective at connecting this with other data and “using insights to provide the
best possible health care or to ensure the system is equitable, sustainable and
performing well”.
“Data is often duplicated, it’s not always digitised which makes it harder to
access, and there are variations in the way information is recorded,” he says.
The Ministry has published a Data and Information Strategy for Health and Disability and two-year Roadmap outlining a set of
actions across five priority areas. These are; data foundations, equity and
data sovereignty, consumer participation, people and leadership, data and
information accessibility.
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https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/589310/South-Island-saves-15-years-of-patient-travel-with-telehealth.htm
South Island saves 15 years of patient travel with telehealth
Tuesday, 7 December 2021
NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca
McBeth
South Island DHBs have avoided more than 9 million
kilometres of patient travel and more than 15 years of patient travel time by
switching to telehealth for some outpatient appointments over the past year, a
new interactive dashboard reveals.
By avoiding a significant amount of travel, the DHBs also avoided 2.4 million
kilos of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Launched in November, The South Island Regional Telehealth Dashboard was
developed in collaboration with the five South Island DHBs to track progress
across the South Island and support health services to connect and share
resources.
The tool was modelled on a local dashboard created by Nelson Marlborough Health
and pulls data from the National Non-Admitted Patient Collection (NNPAC).
It shows that between July 2020 to August 2021 more than 8 million minutes of
patient travel time was avoided by people being able to attend hospital
outpatient appointments via phone or video.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/anz/new-zealand-looks-initially-release-hira-mid-2022
New Zealand looks to initially release Hira by mid-2022
The first phase of release will make available basic patient
information that solutions providers can access.
By Adam
Ang
December 10, 2021 01:48 AM
Hira, the national health information platform by the New
Zealand Ministry of Health, is targeted to be publicly launched by the middle
of next year.
In a public webinar on Friday, Darren Douglass, the
ministry's general manager for digital strategy and investment, data, and
digital, shared a tentative timeline of the release of the platform.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
The first release in May next year aims to provide access to
basic patient information stored in the National Health Index and from health
providers. This also includes COVID-19 immunisation and test results,
leveraging My Health Account. Solutions providers that cater to vulnerable
communities, such as small non-profit organisations, are targeted to be its
first users.
The second release in June will make available the ability
to update user's contact details through the platform, as well as the ability
to update affiliation details, especially for the Maori community. Contract
tracing services will also be introduced in this phase.
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https://www.afr.com/street-talk/alcidion-acquires-silverlink-raising-55-million-20211207-p59fhz
Alcidion acquires Silverlink, raising $55 million
Anthony
Macdonald, Yolanda
Redrup and Kanika Sood
Dec 7, 2021 – 12.27pm
Healthcare informatics company Alcidion is raising $55
million to fund the acquisition of UK patient administration software (PAS)
company Silverlink.
The acquisition extends Alcidion’s capability into PAS and
is fitting with its vision of becoming a cloud-based modular electronic patient
record.
Silverlink services the UK’s National Health Service and has
forecast $7.8 million revenue from existing contracts for the year to April 30,
2022 and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $4.8
million.
It’s the second UK-based acquisition Alcidion has made in
the last nine months, having also acquired patient flow management software
company ExtraMed in April.
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https://itwire.com/cloud/intersystems-trakcare-solution-streamlines-auckland-district-health-board%E2%80%99s-management-system.html
Friday, 10 December 2021 11:33
InterSystems TrakCare solution streamlines Auckland District Health
Board’s management system
By Kenn
Anthony Mendoza
Auckland District Health Board and data technology company
InterSystems have developed a patient administration system that will enable
proactive communication among care providers across the region and in the
community.
The InterSystems
TrakCare solution will streamline business processes and workflows to
replace three patient management systems. It will also feature new capabilities
such as customer-centric appointment bookings.
InterSystems says the staff will benefit from a modern, easy
to use interface, more efficient workflows, and access from their mobile
devices.
Implementation of the cloud-based system will commence in
January 2022. It will serve multiple facilities including Auckland City Hospital, Starship
Children’s Hospital, and community organisations to support an estimated
145,000 inpatient and one million outpatient visits per year.
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https://www.smh.com.au/money/saving/5g-v-nbn-new-battleground-for-fast-internet-20211210-p59gk6.html
5G v NBN: New battleground for fast internet
December 11, 2021 — 10.00pm
Australians might soon find out who was right about the
internet: Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull.
A decade ago, when Mr Rudd was prime minister and building
the new National Broadband Network, Mr Turnbull, as opposition spokesman for
communications, predicted that the NBN would become an endangered species
because of the eventual arrival of wireless 5G internet.
Fast-forward to 2021 and 5G internet access is now a
reality.
The big-three telcos have rolled out their 5G networks to as
many as three-quarters of their customers and are also now selling 5G internet
plans, too.
Vodafone even came out recently with a 5G plan with a heavy
discount to prise people away from the NBN, which it says is less profitable
for them.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/nbn-replaced-over-21000-fttc-connection-devices-in-six-weeks-to-mid-november/
NBN replaced over 21,000 FttC connection devices in six weeks to
mid-November
Storms keep frying the innards of the NBN Co Connection
Devices, with almost 100,000 needing replacement since December 2020.
Written by Chris Duckett,
APAC Editor
on December 10, 2021 | Topic: Networking
When summer weather begins to hit the Australian east coast,
those on fibre-to-the-curb (FttC) connections need to brace for some
electronics frying thanks to lightning activity.
In an update to the numbers
it revealed to Senate Estimates in May, where it had replaced almost 48,000
FttC connection devices across November 2020 to March 2021, NBN said it has now
replaced 99,226 NBN Co Connection Devices (NCD) from 1 December 2020 to 11
November 2021.
"Between 1 October 2021 and 11 November 2021 NBN Co has
replaced a total of 21,424 devices. This includes replacements as a result of
multiple severe weather events across the eastern states of Australia during
October," it said.
"FttC NCDs ... can be replaced for a wide variety of
reasons, including customers removing the device when they move house, new
devices being automatically provided when a customer changes providers, and
accidental damage in premises."
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https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/mission-creep-nbn-co-picks-another-fight-with-telcos-20211209-p59g7u.html
‘Mission creep’: NBN Co picks another fight with telcos
By Zoe Samios
December 10, 2021 — 12.01am
TPG Telecom and Vocus Group have accused NBN Co of creeping
into their patch after the company in charge of the National Broadband Network
released a proposal that would allow it to connect businesses directly with
third-party data centres.
The proposal, outlined in a construct paper by NBN Co, has
reopened old wounds with telcos, which have warned that connecting business
customers to the centres would pit NBN Co in direct competition with them, and
would be a waste of money.
TPG Telecom said in a response to the paper, seen by this
masthead, that it had “serious concerns” about the proposal to overbuild
existing commercial networks.
“It is unclear to TPG how NBN could consider this investment
to be either efficient or consistent with its legislated mandate to provide
connectivity to premises,” it said. “It is also difficult to see how there
could be a policy justification for NBN to overbuild in what is a highly
competitive and well-served market, when it is advocating for billions more in
taxpayer funding to upgrade its residential networks.”
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-says-not-all-brownfields-premises-will-have-attainable-25mbps-speed-by-the-end-of-2022-573832
NBN Co says not 'all' brownfields premises will have attainable 25Mbps
speed by the end of 2022
By Ry Crozier on Dec
10, 2021 7:14AM
In response to Labor questions.
NBN Co said there would not be a time that “all” premises in
brownfields areas would have access to minimum line speeds of 25/5Mbps before
the end of 2022, owing to a variety of factors that could impact an end-to-end
connection.
The response to Labor senators continued a long-running
series of questions that sought to understand how many premises are not capable
of minimum 25Mbps line speeds, particularly now that the network has been
declared "built and fully operational".
The 2016 statement of expectations (SOE) given to NBN Co by
the government stated that “the network will provide peak wholesale download
data rates (and proportionate upload rates) of at least 25 megabits per second
to all premises, and at least 50 megabits per second to 90 per cent of fixed
line premises as soon as possible.”
The current SOE does not restate these speeds, though it
notes that NBN Co - as the default statutory infrastructure provider or SIP in
most parts of Australia - “must meet legal obligations, including in relation
to minimum service speed and network performance requirements.”
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/optus-trials-mm-wave-5g-at-indoor-play-centre-in-melbourne-573743
Optus trials mm-Wave 5G at indoor play centre in Melbourne
By Ry Crozier on Dec
8, 2021 1:16PM
Hopes to make the service commercially available
"soon".
Optus is hoping to bring to market a 5G home internet
service "soon" that offers multi-gigabit speeds, with a
proof-of-concept currently underway at an indoor children’s play centre in
Melbourne.
Managing director of marketing and revenue Matt Williams
told an Optus business briefing that the proof-of-concept location is sharing
its connection to power customer wi-fi, with strong early speed results
achieved.
The proof-of-concept service uses millimetre-wave spectrum,
and is what Optus will ultimately brand as “5G Max”.
While the telco had first revealed it was running a
proof-of-concept late last month, the identity of the customer had not been
disclosed.
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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/article/how-5g-will-transform-health-care-1389622827
How 5G will transform health care
By Louise Hyland, CEO, Australian Mobile Telecommunications
Association (AMTA)
Friday, 03 December, 2021
During COVID-19 lockdowns across the world we saw many new
examples of mobile technology used within the health sector, including numerous
people using telehealth for the first time.
With 5G networks being switched on across the country, the
connectivity of 5G is set to continue to transform the healthcare system and
how we manage our own health in the wake of the pandemic. 5G, which is the
fifth generation of mobile technology, offers safe, high-speed connections with
low lag and increased capacity, which will make health technology more
efficient and reliable, helping to save lives and improve the wellbeing of Australians.
5G networks will support the Internet of Medical Things
(IoMT), critical medical innovations and artificial intelligence (AI) through
remote access, real-time monitoring, fast data transfer and high-capacity data
processing. These technological advancements will in turn help support our
aging population, close the divide between rural and metropolitan healthcare
services, provide remote access to world-class doctors and surgeons, and help
more Australians maintain and improve their health.
Looking to the post-COVID future, the Australian Mobile
Telecommunications Association (AMTA) has identified five ways that 5G will
drive this digital transformation in health.
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Enjoy!
David.
