IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Health Minister Nicola Roxon has confirmed GP Partners in Brisbane, GP Access in the NSW Hunter Valley and Melbourne East will receive $12.5 million in total funding to act as pilot sites over the next two years.

The Australian today revealed the three GP divisions had been selected as lead implementation sites, under a project led by the National E-Health Transition Authority.

Australian Medical Association president Andrew Pesce warns that patient care is "best served" when doctors have access to complete health records.

"Personal e-health records empower and encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own health, but their use may be severely limited in terms of their content, accuracy and the comprehensiveness of information," Dr Pesce said.

"We must move to drag Australia into the world of modern communications," said Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) president, Councillor Geoff Lake, in reference to a damning review of the broadband situation in the Association’s latest State of the Regions (SoR) report.

This exciting new e-health program will give new parents a sense of empowerment through simple tools to monitor and assist the first three years of their child’s development and, through activities, address any delays as they occur.

Australian citizens will only be able to avoid information being recorded against their healthcare identifier number by using medical services anonymously or giving a false name and paying full price for medical services, according to a legal expert.

University of Melbourne law professor Loane Skene - who supports the healthcare identifier as a way to allow research organisations to access medical information without consent - raised the prospect during a speech at the University of Monday night.

E-government and related policy initiatives are designed to reduce the cost of customer service and compliance while at the same time improving service quality and delivering a more personalized experience to citizens. Today, the basic drive to put services online is approaching its limits. A recent Accenture report into e-Government, "Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences", found in Australia 96 percent of the services covered by the Accenture survey are available online.

While Health Minister Nicola Roxon said consumers would "truly control" their personal electronic health records at her e-health forum last week, attendees did not see a draft concept of operations, showing a patient portal tacked on to a public/private providers' shared e-health record system (SEHR).

The confidential draft for the $467 million personally controlled e-health record (PCEHR) system was produced by the National E-Health Transition Authority, just before the forum.

Federal and state ministers have kept tight wraps on costings and timetables since agreeing last December to adopt the National E-Health Strategy, prepared by Deloitte.

The $1 billion to $2 billion range "represents a relatively modest investment" when compared with the total annual health spend of $90 billion, with $60 billion coming from all levels of government.

A new web-based information system is set to give nurses and midwives in South Australia (SA) instant access to patient records. The technology, developed by Sydney-based Emerging Systems and commissioned by the state government of South Australia, will be used to integrate patient records across the public hospital system to help improve the speed, accuracy and hence the safety of healthcare delivery.

National E-Health Transition Authority chief executive Peter Fleming said the business case for Individual E-Health Records (IEHR) "has been built, and it clearly ties into the government's overall health agenda and recommendations from the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission".

The team has been chosen for the 2020 Summit. When Canberra plays host to 1000 participants on April 19 and 20, the ICT industry (our industry), will be represented by a mere handful of people.

Where are our flag wavers?

Services that depend on high-quality broadband infrastructure include tele-health, e-education, e-business, digital media, e-government, smart meters etc. In countries where the national telco is lagging behind we see that local governments have no choice other than to take a leadership role, as they have done with similar infrastructure over the last 100 years.

Senator Eric Abetz, the Special Minister of State, told ZDNet Australia today he and the Minister for Human Services, Joe Hockey, were working on a project that would see cards incorporating smart chip technology and a photograph of the bearer replace a raft of government services and concession cards, including Medicare cards.

An electronic system accessible via a website is expected to be in place by early 2009.

Under the new "e-health" system, patients will be given a unique number to allow them, their doctor and other health specialists to access their medical history.

The Electronic Claims Lodgement Information Processing Service Environment allows privately insured hospital patients to pay their doctors bill by lodging a single claim to both Medicare and their insurer.

It also gives the patient warning of any out-of-pocket expenses.

Chief executive Lynelle Briggs said the nature of the services Medicare provided was "shifting as the government leverages our relationship with the community", such as its delivery of ceiling insulation stimulus programs on behalf of the Department of the Environment.

In a statement, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Helen Coonan, said the government would develop a range of tools to help government agencies "make informed decisions to suit their IT needs and get value for money".

The three rural independents say broadband is one of the big issues for their electorates, as they head into the second week of negotiations with Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard.

Labor plans a fibre network of 100 megabits a second to 93 per cent of households, while the Coalition says it will use a mix of technologies to provide a minimum 12 megabits per second, and up to 100 megabits, to 97 per cent of homes.

The ministers today will announce national consultations with health experts and privacy groups to formulate legal safeguards for the electronic health system, which is expected to transform health-care efficiency and safety.