IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia (SHPA) has called on the Federal Government to link the electronic prescription systems across the entire health system.

Dr Ronald McCoy, a board member of a men's health program, The M5 Project, developed by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), is hoping that new e-health systems may help to detect preventable illnesses earlier and ultimately lead to better health outcomes for men.

CSIRO scientists at the e-Health Research Centre will work with their counterparts in Europe and the United States to develop technologies to support effective communication in clinical teams.

The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) International Science Linkages program has made available a $221,145 grant enabling the e-health centre to be involved in the AMIDA (Augmented Multi-party Interaction with Distant Access) project.

The report collated of issues discussed at recent round-table sessions in Brisbane, Alice Springs and Canberra, where over 150 people gathered to pass on their thoughts on electronic health records to the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA).

The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) last week delivered a draft of its Better Rural Services report to the federal government and has since held discussions with a number of departments. It plans to submit a final report to the Australian Government Information Management Office in mid-October.

The federal agency responsible for the rollout yesterday stated that this identity would lessen the risks of exposure to someone’s information.

Ovum analysts Kevin Noonan and David Kennedy said the Australian community was ready to have a “grown-up discussion” about broadband speeds and coverage.

They said no political party could afford to be caught unprepared on key technology issues.

"In the post-election carve-up, both sides of politics have assigned experienced ministers to lead the charge on communications policy, and both have nominated broadband as one of the key battlegrounds for winning or retaining government," the analysts said.

Andy Bond has quite a job ahead of him. As chief scientist at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), he’s playing a leading role in an ongoing effort to develop consistent interoperability standards for linking departments and organizations at all levels of government.

"We believe it's time to look at the consumer and business involvement," technology, media and telecommunications leader Damien Tampling says. "How it's going to be used by consumers will make it a successful project.

In a joint statement released this week, the medical software and standards compliance industry heavyweights - the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) and Joint Accreditation System of Australia & New Zealand (JAS-ANZ) – have defined and agreed the principles on which compliance, conformance and certification of software products will be based. The four also outlined a cost-effective pathway to standards development using existing industry mechanisms.

The third annual e-government study by North America's Brown University found that only 16 per cent of countries provided citizens with access to online government services - up from 12 per cent a year earlier.

The Federal Government and healthcare industry bodies should abandon proprietary software and embrace open source software if Australia is to have a successful national e-health platform, argues e-health academic, Professor Jon Patrick.

Government agencies around Australia have begun to open up their wallets to increase spending on ICT initiatives.

The Federal Government, NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania have all announced new projects with spending to cover a variety of technologies and services, including e-health and upgrading IT equipment in the defence forces.

"This is an important step forward in allowing online access to health records for each Australian that chooses to," Roxon said in a statement. "Patients will control what goes onto their record and who can access their information."

CSC was paid $1.7 million to plan and cost the "personally controlled e-health record" program unveiled in the May budget, in a three-month project over Christmas.

While consumer, privacy and industry representatives spent their break poring over the draft legislation, the government was investigating National Health and Hospital Reform Commission recommendations on a more commercial approach.

Sites in Brisbane, the Hunter Valley and Melbourne's eastern suburbs will receive $12.5 million over two years as the starting point for the Labor party’s proposed $466.7 million e-health records policy.

Three general practitioner networks - GPpartners in Brisbane, GP Access in the Hunter Valley and the Melbourne East GP Network - will receive the funding to implement both the e-health records and unique health care identifiers for patients, providers and hospitals, as well as electronic discharge summary and referrals systems.

Instead, education was the big IT winner. But while Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd promised to deliver internet access to the nation's schools at speeds of up 100Mbps, it seems there is no such plan to link doctors, hospitals and other medical providers to the proposed fibre-to-the-node network.

Labor Senator, Kate Lundy, has reinforced the need for a cultural transformation within Federal Government departments as a requisite step in the move to Gov 2.0.

In answering questions in a live blog hosted by The Australian, Lundy asserted the need for strong political leadership to drive change at the individual department level as a way of "encouraging people to implement their new ideas and then supporting the scaling up of what works".

The policies, the only ones announced by either Labor or the Coalition at their respective campaign launches, make a strong link between two issues the government is eager to campaign on: health and the national broadband network.

''It is disturbing to me, it is unacceptable to me, it is offensive to me that if you live in rural or regional Australia you are three times more likely to die within five years if you are diagnosed with cancer than other Australians,'' Prime Minister Julia Gillard said at Labor's campaign launch yesterday.