IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Hunter Urban Medicare Local has spent the past year doing preparatory work.

The Medicare Local’s primary care, IT and e-health director John Baillie said the Hunter system would go live in the next few weeks.

Fifty patients in NSW with an average age of 87, suffering serious heart or lung conditions requiring regular hospital stays, were chosen for the six-month trial last year.

Each was given a ''medibox'' linked to the broadband network so they could regularly type in details of their blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen and weight. Any change in condition was spotted by a doctor earlier than through less-frequent visits to a GP, the trial found, allowing for the quicker introduction of preventative treatment.

Opened to response last week, the panel contract replaces the state’s 2007 Personal Computers contract and covers end-user equipment including desktops, notebooks, tablets, workstations and other client computing devices.

Collectively, NSW agencies are among the country’s biggest hardware customers.

National ICT Australia (NICTA) startup Saluda Medical has been awarded $5 million by the New South Wales Government for the development of technology which will improve chronic pain management.

According to Saluda researchers, electrical stimulation of the patient’s spinal cord can offer pain relief. However, it can also cause uncomfortable side effects.

The Southern NSW Medicare Local eHealth team announced the milestone last week, putting the region in fifth place Australia-wide for personally controlled electronic health record registrations.

SNSWML eHealth Manager Virginia Voce explained that an eHealth record is a secure electronic summary of an individual’s health records and information. “You and the healthcare organisations you authorise can access it online whenever you need, from wherever you are in Australia,” she said.

The scheme has been compared to the government's bungled roof insulation system by the Coalition's eHealth spokesman, Andrew Southcott, who called it ''Pink Batts on steroids''.

The eHealth scheme was launched with fanfare in July, with an advertising truck touring Australia to encourage 500,000 people to register in the first year. The Health Minister, Tanya Plibersek, declared: ''We estimate eHealth will save the federal government around $11 billion over 15 years. That's pretty good bang for your buck.''

The office led by Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim received 114 voluntary data breach notifications, 35 mandatory digital health data notifications, and 2,494 privacy-related complaints during the 12-month period.# During the 2016-17 financial year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) received a total of 114 voluntary data beach notifications, with a further 35 mandatory digital health data breach notifications also reported, the agency's 2016-17 Annual Report [PDF] has revealed.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has released its draft guide (PDF) on how mandatory data breach notifications should be handled under the personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) system, and is once again polling the public on whether its approach to the issue is adequate.

A $20.6 million pilot program starting in July will use the national broadband network to deliver telehealth services to older Australians, cancer patients and those in palliative care.

Groups can apply for grants, typically of between $1 million and $3 million, to conduct two-year trials in telehealth services for patients, particularly in regional and rural areas.

From July 1 next year, patients will have to volunteer to ''opt in'' to the system, which stores all their health details, including test results and prescriptions, in a national database. It's the first time patients will be able to access their medical information.

Sustainability Victoria, an environmental arm of the Victorian government, has devised the 5 Star Sustainability for Government, an interactive sustainability benchmarking tool created for public organisations.

Government agencies and departments in Victoria must register and log-in at the 5 Star Sustainability website (www.5starsustainability.vic.gov.au) to use the tool.

For our previous open datasets of the week, FutureGov has selected data released on national government portals. But we don’t want to ignore the wealth of data available from state and city governments.

This week’s open dataset comes from Melbourne in Australia. The city has released data from its parking sensors across the central business district dating back to 2009. It is comprehensive, accurate and enormously useful.

Premier Campbell Newman used his estimates hearing debut in Parliament on Tuesday morning to announce a "data revolution" for Queensland.

Mermaid Beach MP Ray Stevens has been appointed Assistant Minister to the Premier on e-government to roll out the facility.

This is done by integrating existing health-care records and data. It is hoped the result will be more health information for more people to access more easily.

The capacity for anyone to access large amounts of health information is likely to have far-reaching effects. We’re researching open health in the United Kingdom, which has one of the most aggressive open data policies in the world, because as Australia enters the world of open health, it’s important to engage with the experiences of other countries in an open and democratic fashion, and apply them to our own situation.

Under an ambitious timeline set by former health minister Nicola Roxon, the PCEHR system was supposed to begin operations nationwide from July 1.

But the Health Department has confirmed that only the "core participation and registration functionality" will be available on the launch date.

The NSW Government has launched a $2.4 million partnership with two Sydney universities to bring smart cities technology to regional councils. Wendy Tuckerman

The Smart Regional Spaces: Ready, Set, Go! is a partnership with the University of Sydney and UNSW Sydney under the Smart Places Strategy.

The project will run for 16-months and the team is seeking to partner with three regional NSW councils to pilot a process and range of tools to help them become ‘smart-ready’, which will then be made available to all regional councils in the state after the project.

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," Turnbull told a press conference in Melbourne.

Opposition human services spokesman Doug Cameron said on Monday night that Fairfax Media's report on the security of the myGov website was concerning.

Parliamentary committee details issues with My Health Record bill.

A joint parliamentary committee has written to Health Minister Sussan Ley to express concerns about the "significant" effect the government's planned introduction of opt-out e-health records could have on an individual's privacy.

In September the government introduced a bill that would amend the existing personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) law to enable it to boost its stalled e-health records scheme by creating a record for every Australian by default.