IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner, the “future” is set in 2019. In this version, the grey skies are littered with flying cars called “spinners”. Flying cars may not yet be a reality yet but there have been groundbreaking developments in the field of connected vehicles in recent years.

In the words of Peter Schwarzenbauer, board member of BMW AG, “We are currently experiencing the biggest change the automotive industry has ever seen. It all comes down to whether we believe we can earn as much money in the future from mobility services as we can from selling cars.” This concept of new mobility which has seen ridesharing platforms and connected vehicles emerge is challenging the traditional assumptions of automakers. If they are to deliver on their vision of new mobility they first must convince consumers to get on board, and digital identity will play a key role.

Communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull unveiled the initiatives in the Coalition’s Policy for E-Government and the Digital Economy on Monday.

“In this document we set out a range of important policy measures that will super charge Australia’s government role in the digital economy of the 21st century,” Mr Turnbull told a press conference in Melbourne.

Australians may soon be able to pay bills to every level of government and get information about all government services through a single website with one login, as easily as they can do internet banking or order a taxi through an app.

The Digital Transformation Agency has confirmed it will move several high value technology projects to other agencies, including management of the controversial COVIDSafe app, as part of sweeping machinery of government changes.

The offload is part of a shift for the one-time delivery agency to one focused on policy development, and follows a significant budget cut and portfolio move this year.

New Govt transactions will need to meet ‘standards’.

The federal government’s freshly minted Digital Transformation Office has issued the list of expectations agencies will need to meet before they launch any major new electronic services.

The ‘standards’ - borrowed from the UK Government’s own service design criteria - will apply to all new and redesigned services owned or partly-owned by Commonwealth agencies that account for more than 50,000 transactions per year.

The eagerly anticipated Digital Twin Victoria (DTV) platform is now live, following completion of its first development phase.

The digital replica of the state is being built in partnership with Australia’s National Science Agency CSIRO.

The platform is just one piece of the DTV program, a $37.4 million investment by the Victorian Government in digital twin technology and spatial innovation.

Digital or e-government has been prominent on Australia’s political agenda for at least a decade. It has led to improvements in e-services that allow you to pay rates online, submit a digital tax return, or claim rebates for medical bills.

But while e-services can make life more convenient for those who have access, there are signs that transacting with the state digitally is fast becoming mandatory. The My Health Record opt-out system, for example, assumes everyone will participate in this digital initiative unless they take deliberate action to do otherwise.

The state is currently engaged in consolidating shared services platforms in different ‘clusters’ across its operations — for example, in the education or health areas. One of the largest clusters which it plans to consolidate back office services for is the ‘justice’ cluster, which includes not only mega-departments such as NSW Police but also Fire and Rescue NSW, the Department of the Attorney-General and Justice, Legal Aid NSW and more.

More than half (51%) of physicians said in 2013 that the financial benefits of an electronic medical record/electronic health record system do not outweigh the costs of implementing it, according to the 2013 Physician Sentiment Index released by athenahealth.

Patients in rural, regional and outer metropolitan areas are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the increase in Medicare funding for telehealth services because they will no longer have to travel to big cities to see specialists.

Incentive payments of $6000 are available for health practitioners who take up telehealth services, along with a $20 bonus each time a practitioner bulk bills a service in the first year. New Medicare items will allow benefits to be paid for existing consultation services conducted using video conferences.

The project was initially funded in the 2010 Federal Budget to the tune of $466.7 million after years of the health industry and technology experts calling for development and national leadership in e-health and health identifier technology to better tie together patients’ records and achieve clinical outcomes. The project is overseen by the Department of Health and Ageing in coalition with the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA).

The government has won the agreement of big doctors' groups, including the Australian Medical Association, to new arrangements that will allow doctors to claim as much as $100 from Medicare for collating health records with their patients. But as part of the agreement the government has also agreed to postpone the deadline for doctors to meet e-health capability requirements until next May, after originally proposing February.

Held on Tuesday, the meeting followed calls by AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton for Professor Halton to intervene and take a “personal focus” on why highly respected eHealth clinical advocate Dr Mukesh Haikerwal and several other medical advisors suddenly parted company with National eHealth Transition Authority (NeHTA) after a decade of attempting to make eHealth an everyday reality.

Some doctors fear they may be held liable if the patient-controlled records aren’t kept up-to-date. And consumers remain concerned about the privacy of their medical information. So, what are the realities of these risks?

The idea is that the user goes to a GP or other health centre (for example, nursing homes) to have a conference with a specialist who is farther away than the patient would like to travel.

As part of a $620 million initiative, the doctors who decide to do telehealth consultations in 2011/12 get a $6000 one-off payment to fund set-up costs. However, this amount drops to $4800 in 2012/13, $3900 in the next year and $3300 the year after that.

Consumers who customise their personally controlled electronic health record could miss out on its intended benefits, a Parliamentary committee into cybersafety was told.

Consumers Health Forum chief executive Carol Bennett told a committee hearing that doctors could refuse to use a patient's e-health record if that patient declined access to certain medical documents associated with the record.

Online consultations have the ability to help overcome doctor shortages in rural areas and combat rising costs in the Australian healthcare system, according to Professor Moyez Jiwa, Chair of Health Innovation in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University.

The use of online video technology is a long way from being “routine practice”, which is now prompting further research.

Telehealth is a technological application between medical professionals and patients that allows easier communications between all parties, which has been an important development to address the problems in remote areas of Australia where patients are not necessarily in the vicinity of a medical specialist.

The standards setting process has been thrown into chaos this year, after the Health department cut funding for work being done by Standards Australia’s IT-014 committees in June.

The e-health experts were involved in a large work program on technical specifications needed for the Gillard government’s $500m personally controlled e-health record (PCEHR) system.

Among the first to go was NEHTA's head of clinical leadership Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, the former AMA president, who has been the medical face of the personally controlled e-health records (PCEHRs) for the last six years.