IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

In his foreword to the paper, South Australia Connected: Ready for the Future, the state’s Premier and Minister for the Public Sector, Jay Weatherill, noted that the whitepaper (available online in various formats here) had been compiled in partnership with vendor lobby group the Australian Information Industry Association, which represents a number of industry giants such as IBM and Microsoft, as well as smaller players. The Premier noted that South Australia wanted to “embed a new culture of innovation between government agencies, and between government and industry”.

Diabetes Australia and eftpos announced a mobile app providing resources on how to prevent and manage the disease.

The free e-health app, which will be released in mid-2014, lets users enter information about their personal healthcare, lifestyle and dietary requirements. It also provides the latest news, research and medical product information related to diabetes.

Highly affordable mobile internet has propelled Australia to the top of a global ‘digital quality of life’ index despite the nation’s beleaguered broadband network delivering some of the world’s slowest internet speeds.

Australia was ranked first out of 65 countries in the 2019 Digital Quality of Life (DQL) index released this week by internet privacy company Surfshark.

“These projects will change the way essential services are delivered to regional, rural and remote Australian communities,” the Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy said.

“The initiative will ensure Australians living outside our major metropolitan centres benefit directly from improved access to digital health services, online educational opportunities and improved emergency and disaster response.”

While electronic voting is not possible under the current legislation in Australia, other forms of automation are under discussion, said Michael Cuddihy, Director, Project Management Office, Strategic Capability Branch, AEC.

More than 70 per cent of the AEC’s budget goes on maintaining the voter register, and automation could significantly reduce this cost, Cuddihy noted.

In a report entitled "Measuring the Efficiency and Effectiveness of E-Government", the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) said an audit of six agencies, including Austrade, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency (CSA), the Department of Health and Ageing, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) and the National Archives of Australia, found methods "were inadequate to assess whether their delivery of government services and programs through the Internet was efficient and effective".

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) says that e-health strategies need to take this into account and find out how rural and remote GPs can receive the resources and support they will need.

Both bills [Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 and Healthcare Identifiers (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2010] were passed with government amendments.

The standards and foundations for nationwide e-health solutions in Australia have now mainly been completed, he asserts.

IT companies are been urged to look at opportunities in the e-health market as Australia faces an aging population over the next 10 years.

KPMG Australia partner, Bernard Salt, told delegates at Gartner’s Infrastructure, Operations and Data Centre Summit that as the baby boomer generation retires and lives longer, the requirement for e-health will rise.

The Department of Health and Ageing has settled on the Federal Government’s single sign-on portal as the primary method of accessing consumer e-health records when they are made available later this year.

Consumers who opt for a personally controlled electronic health record from July 1 will be required to link their record to their login credentials on the australia.gov.au online portal in order to access the record online.

The proposal suggested by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission (NHHRC) would give Australians access to their health records online and medical professionals would need a patient's permission to access the data.

Having access to their own records is seen as vital to ensure consumer acceptance of the proposed e-health revolution and it would allow individuals to go online and update their records and add relevant information and doctors, specialists, pharmacists and other health professionals would all have to become "e-enabled" to access the data.

In terms of overall spending trend of the Australian healthcare industry, IT spending has a very minor share in the overall spending. As per our industry estimates, healthcare industry spent only 2% of its overall healthcare spending in 2009, which is very less in comparison to the international standards. Thus, the segment holds a lot of potential for future growth. Our report will help clients to better understand the market dynamics and get an insight of the current and the future outlook of the Australian healthcare IT industry.

Unveiling the plan, the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said that every minute detail of a person’s medical record will be combined together through electronic medium in a short form by the mid of the next year.

He further added that the e-health system will be accessible to both patients and physicians only after they enter they unique 16-digit identification number, which will be given to them very soon.

Typically, mental health patients visit a number of healthcare providers and it is possible for a patient to have a GP, psychologist and psychiatrist and also deal with other health professionals, pharmacists and even rehabilitation programs, who all need accurate and up to date information about the patient's care and medication.

The report, which was developed by consultancy Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu earlier this year but only partially published last week, was endorsed by state and federal health ministers last week as a key strategy document outlining how the nation's outdated and dysfunctional health IT systems should be brought up to date.