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."

Sunday, October 02, 2022

The More I Thought About This The More Absurd It Seemed To Become!

This appeared last week via a pretty obscure news scan!

Tamil Nadu keen on Australian model for beefing up digital healthcare platform, looks for partnerships

While Tamil Nadu has a robust healthcare service, the government feels that the state’s healthcare is more of department-centric and cost -specific

Written by Sajan C Kumar

Updated: September 30, 2022 4:48:19 pm

The state's National Health Mission is on the mission to develop an outcome-based approach to bring more clarity on the money spent on healthcare.

To strengthen its digital healthcare platform, the Tamil Nadu government is looking at the Australian model of solutions by which the land Down Under has managed to cover 90% of its population under a digital record system. The state plans to forge partnerships with Australia’s Digital Health Agency on various aspects pertaining to the digitisation of the healthcare records.

While Tamil Nadu has a robust healthcare service, the government feels that the state’s healthcare is more of department-centric and cost -specific. According to the government, there is a need to shift to beneficiary-centric approach for which data is important. Given the realisation that due to lack of data there is a limitation to analyse the efficiency and utilisation of the services and hence plans to digitise the entire healthcare platform of the state.

The state government representatives have recently met a high-level Australian Digital Health delegates who are currently in India as a part of the Australia – India Business Exchange 2022 Business Mission to discuss about the possible partnership.

The delegation, organised by the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, of the Australian government, met with the Tamil Nadu government and local healthcare industry representatives.

Speaking on the sidelines, Tamil Nadu finance minister Palanivel Thiagarajan, said the state has been at the forefront of healthcare with 3-4 doctors for every 1,000 people, which is 3-4 times the national average and better than the US ratio. “But the problem is we are department-centric and cost-specific, and we need to shift to beneficiary centric approach for data is important.”

The state’s National Health Mission is on the mission to develop an outcome-based approach to bring more clarity on the money spent on healthcare.

He said: “The finance mnistry takes active role in ensuring the efficiency with which the people’s money is spent. But today we don’t even collect data, we don’t how many show up for work or which machine is functioning and how many patients are benefiting. Since there is no data, there can’t be analysis as well,” the minister said adding that nearly 10-15 % of the state’s budget is towards health care.

Recalling his recent visit to Australia, the minister said he was impressed with remote medicine and remote consultations during the pandemic and the data transmission processes on vaccination statistics in Australia.

“I think we can learn a lot. There is natural fit. The people are easy to work with, there is cultural fit and lot of potential here to improve efficiency. We look forward to meaningful progress,” Thiagarajan said.

Abdul Ekram, trade and investment commissioner, Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said that the Australian MedTech solutions are significantly contributing to Indian healthcare ecosystem. Australian scalable digital solutions have the potential to be integrated into Tamil Nadu’s already existing digital health value chain.

Holger Kauffman, chief technology officer, Australian Digital Health Agency showcased how Australia managed to cover 90 % of its population under the My Health digital record system. Around 23.3 million are covered under the system with about four billion documents being processed.

Shilpa Prabhakar Satish, director, National Health Mission in her presentation showcased various digital initiatives taken up by Tamil Nadu and said efforts were being made to implement in-patient management systems at all health institutions across the state. She pointed out that after the Population Health Registry was developed, it would be integrated with the Health Management Information System.

More here:

https://www.financialexpress.com/healthcare/tamil-nadu-keen-on-australian-model-for-beefing-up-digital-healthcare-platform-looks-for-partnerships/2696794/

First a bit of basic info,

Tamil Nadu is a state of India with a population almost  3 times that of Australia and with a capital of Chenai with a population of 8 million or so. It has a recorded history that runs back over 2,500 years and economically a GDP per person of about $3,200 US per person (About $A4800). So it is certainly reasonably prosperous and populous!

More important is this on industry in Chenai – From Wikipedia.

“Electronics and software

Electronics manufacturing is a growing industry in Tamil Nadu, with many international companies like Nokia, Flex, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Foxconn, Samsung, Cisco, Moser Baer, Lenovo, Dell, Sanmina-SCI, Bosch, Texas Instruments having chosen Chennai as their South Asian manufacturing hub. Products manufactured include circuit boards and cellular phone handsets.[150]

Tamil Nadu is the second largest software exporter by value in India. Software exports from Tamil Nadu grew from ₹76 billion ($1.6 billion) in 2003–04 to ₹207 billion {$5 billion} by 2006–07 according to NASSCOM[151] and to ₹366 billion in 2008–09 which shows 29 per cent growth in software exports according to STPI. Major national and global IT companies such as Atos Syntel, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Amazon.com, Capgemini, CGI, PayPal, IBM, NTT DATA, Accenture, Ramco Systems, Robert Bosch GmbH, DXC Technology, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra, Virtusa, LTI, Mphasis, Mindtree, Zoho, Mywebbee, and many others have offices in Tamil Nadu. The top engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu have been a major recruiting hub for the IT firms. According to estimates, about 50 per cent of the human resources required for the IT and ITES industry was being sourced from the state.[152] Coimbatore is the second largest software producer in the state, next to Chennai.[153]

Chennai has emerged as the SaaS Capital of India.[154][155][156][157] The SaaS sector in/around Chennai generates US$1 billion in revenue and employs about 10000 personnel.[157]

So they both and sell IT software and services with access to global IT consultants like Tata etc.

And it seems, apparently. the ADHA thinks their #myHealthRecord may be a good fit apparently. They could knock up a better system than the #myHR in a week!

What amazingly arrogant rot is all I can say! Can some one warn them over there of the nonsense ADHA says in its home market and kill this before it starts!

David.

 

AusHealthIT Poll Number 651– Results – 2nd October, 2022.

Here are the results of the poll.

Do You Expect Extended Funding For The ADHA And The #myHealthRecord To Be Announced In The Upcoming October Federal Budget?

Yes                                            18 (35%)

No                                            29 (57%)

I Have No Idea                          4 (8%)

Voters: 51

A rather split vote where most don’t see much more funding coming for the ADHA etc.

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

A fair number of votes. and a very close outcome. 

4 of 51 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

Saturday, October 01, 2022

Weekly Overseas Health IT Links –1st October, 2022.

Here are a few I came across last week.

Note: Each link is followed by a title and 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

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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/improved-ehr-usability-needed-to-support-care-coordination-communication

Improved EHR Usability Needed to Support Care Coordination, Communication

Stakeholders should improve EHR usability and develop new, standardized EHR data elements to document and assess care communication and coordination.

By Hannah Nelson

- Efforts to optimize EHR usability for patients, caregivers, and clinicians are necessary to improve care coordination, according to a National Quality Forum (NQF) report.

With funding from CMS, NQF convened a multistakeholder committee to identify opportunities to measure and improve care communication and coordination using EHRs.

The report outlines five recommendations to make EHRs more useful in measuring and identifying areas for improvement:

  • Collect and share standardized data
  • Optimize EHR usability for patients and caregivers
  • Optimize EHR usability for clinicians
  • Develop novel EHR data elements to improve measurement
  • Leverage EHR data to fill measurement gaps