IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

According to Lisa Pettigrew, national director of healthcare for CSC in Australia, both events could only be positive for the progress or e-health. “This breaks the deadlock that was stifling health and e-health reform,” she told iTWire, speaking from a major healthcare conference currently being held in Brisbane.

More than 31 million sea and air containers were imported into Australia last year, requiring around a million separate lodgements of documentation.

Speaking at the launch the Victorian based Chair of the AIIA, Mr Kee Wong, praised the Government for its focus on streamlining ICT procurement processes and the collaborative approach it has taken in establishing the new Register.

“The e-Services Register represents a collaborative effort between the Government, AIIA and industry to improve Government’s access to a broad range of quality ICT services,” said Mr Wong.

AHPA president Vittorio Cintio has commended the overall objective of the PCEHR legislation, which he said would give consumers more control over their health information and allow healthcare providers quicker and in some cases, shared access to patient records.

But he wants the government to provide support for allied health professionals to be able to participate in the eHealth system, just like it does for GPs.

With less than a year until the launch of the much-vaunted personally controlled electronic health record, government and industry have questioned how they might convince Australians to want an identifiable record of medical histories, prescriptions, allergies and discharge summaries.

Where July 1 2012 had once been seen as the coming of a technology some viewed as greater than the telephone for healthcare, talk at two informatics conferences this week turned instead to what the day would foreshadow, rather than what it would bring.

Many CIOs in the public sector are keen to reap the cost benefits of shared services, but one analyst has warned of the potential risks for those with diverse agency requirements.

Ovum research director IT for the Asia Pacific region, Steve Hodgkinson, said that the benefits are much greater for “commodity-based” spaces such as data centres, networks and application hosting environments, as opposed to areas like human resources or finance which have gotten into trouble in the past.

Hodgkinson pointed to the case of Queensland Health as a prime example of a shared services failure.

Security experts say answers to the identity verification questions are so widely known it would allow a person to set up an e-health record for someone else by telephone if they wanted to access that individual's health details, such as medication or medical procedures.

ANZ Bank chief technology officer Patrick Maes believes the Australian government needs to follow in the footsteps of India and Europe when it establishes a digital identity framework.

A top priority for the federal government's Digital Transformation Office (DTO) has been to establish a trusted digital identity framework, but for Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) chief technology officer Patrick Maes, the principles and standards the government is looking to set are unnecessary.

On Wednesday, federal Health Minister Sussan Ley announced two new trials of the so-far-unsuccessful, personally controlled electronic health record – rebadged as “My Health Record”.

These will run at the start of 2016 in rural north Queensland and the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

The key difference from the current system is that enrolment has been switched to opt out rather than opt in. This means any of the one million patients included in the trials who don’t want their data shared will have to actively ask not to be part of the system.

Imagine if any medical practitioner could access your healthcare records at the click of a mouse. The emergency department could treat you more quickly, specialists could compare test results instantly and you wouldn’t have to remember the last time you had a tetanus shot.

Welcome to the world of eHealth, a program the Government has invested $466 million in. Its aim is to create PCEHRs (Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records) that centralise a patient’s healthcare information and, with their permission, present it to registered healthcare providers.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon is establishing a taskforce to analyse the potential benefits of shared services, following a review of its constituent agencies.

The Federal Government on Friday released the Skehill Review of small to medium agencies in the Attorney-General's Department, after receiving the report in in January (pdf).

CityNext offers cities a broad portfolio of technology solutions such as business software, devices and apps, cloud solutions, and big data platforms, from Microsoft and its partners to help city governments overcome urbanisation and governance challenges in areas from administration to health and transportation.

An audit into New South Wales government spending has been released, showing it spent nearly $1 billion in 2009-10, primarily on projects and services.

The NSW commission of audit’s final report on government expenditure aimed to identify opportunities in delivering more efficient and cost effective processes.

And a Health spokeswoman says new legislation will be needed before the introduction of the Gillard government's $467 million personally controlled e-health record system in July 2012.

While an announcement on the successful tenderer for the $218m smartcard and public key infrastructure is still pending, the spokeswoman said NASH had not been a mandatory requirement for the initial sites.

A NEHTA Specification Dashboard provided on March 14 to the ICT Implement Group managing the introduction of the personally controlled e-health record system included an unusual disclaimer.

A NeHTA spokeswoman has told The Australian the plan would be released “within the next seven days”.

The organisation recently announced a series of “tiger teams” to fast-track critical technical specifications needed for the PCEHR build.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Queensland technology minister Ros Bates said her department, Science, IT Arts and Innovation, currently used eight separate government-run payroll systems, with individual agencies Arts Queensland, CITEC, the Office of the Queensland Scientist, Queensland Shared Services, Queensland State Archives and Smart Service Queensland all using different systems.

What have we learnt from the past decade of “government online”? And what could we learn from the giants of the web: The Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London; the Ferrari Formula One Racing Team; the UK Government Digital Service (GDS); and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)? Surely there is no common thread of insight to be gleaned from this diverse and eclectic grouping of organisations?

Over the past decade or more, the achievement of “client-centric” remains elusive in a system where the client is exposed at the centre of complexity. “Client-centric” is an outside-in view by government agencies; “client context” describes the client’s own view of their needs and aspirations, and is not restricted to government.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) is urging the government to improve the availability of affordable high-speed broadband services in regional, rural and remote areas, noting that this is a top priority in the effort to improve health outcomes in these areas.

In a new position statement, the AMA said roughly 30% of the population living outside of major metropolitan areas often struggles to access health services that urban Australians would consider a basic right.

As of next year, Australians will be able to sign up for a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR). The prospect of having a single record containing a complete medical and health history is seductive - but it could also pose a computer security issue for many aged care providers and recipients.

The Government has recently hired IBM to develop a $24 million computer system that is intended to ensure only the right people can access information stored in those PCEHR records. It's an important step, but there are some who worry it does not go far enough.