IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

With $467 million already spent on the personally controlled e-health record system, Dr Kruys says the project should be scrapped before it burns more cash.

"It's a big mistake they've made. They just keep throwing money at these projects and it's so painful to see. Some of my patients can't even afford medication," says Dr Kruys, who has blogged and spoken about the PCEHR's pitfalls.

A key clinical adviser to the government who quit in frustration last month has described the system as "shambolic".

And the medical software industry says the body running the system, the National E-Health Transition Authority, lacks the skills to do the job and warns patient safety could be at risk.

The system barely functions a year after it was launched and this week former AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal and Dr Nathan Pinksier and two other advisers quit in frustration.

Although 690,000 Australians have signed up for an e-health record the Department of Health has admitted only 5427 patient records have been provided by doctors.

One year since the PCEHR was unveiled subscriber numbers have been steadily increasing and hit 397,745 as at June 30.

Roberts, a Melbourne-based marketing executive, says she has no qualms sharing her medical information with doctors and backs the idea of an e-health record system.

The highly secretive program control group within the Health Department is the main steering body overseeing the implementation of the national personally controlled electronic health record system.

However, the target went beyond the mark. But, Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said that the figures were otherwise, according to her department.

It is being said that the world as well as medicine has changed the computerization in past four decades. Nonetheless, medical records have proved resilient to its advances.

“The primary aim of any e-health system must be to improve outcomes of individual patients who choose to participate, and to also address population health improvements,” CeHA convenor Peter Brown said.

Australia has no co-ordinated approach to e-health safety and security – and with the national Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) just weeks away, the risk of a safety crisis is growing daily.

In her speech at a health conference this week, Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said there were around 520,000 patients on board.

"The government set a goal to have about half a million patients on the national e-health records system by the middle of this year. Not only did we meet this goal, we’ve exceeded it," Ms Plibersek said.

However, only 60 per cent of them said they were willing to share healthcare information online, a bane for the government's personally controlled e-health system.

Around 1000 people participated in the survey commissioned by IT services firm Infosys.

The AMA yesterday said that the information held in the $1 billion personally controlled e-health record system couldn't be trusted as patients, not clinicians, had control over their data.

In its submission to the PCEHR review, the peak health body said that if the PCEHR was an opt-out service, it would boost consumer participation.

He said, "These exciting initiatives will help demonstrate how important high-speed broadband is to the future of healthcare and highlight why it should be rolled out to all Australians".

The department's e-health division head, Matthew Corkhill, ruled that it was against the public interest to release the 21-page report, Assessment of PCEHR Information Security Threat and Risk Assessments, in response to a Freedom of Information request lodged by The Australian in July.

Yesterday, Mr Bailey said that Sunraysia was fortunate to have partnered with the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and the Royal­ Flying Doctor Service.

“Health services have had no access to these kinds of specialist services for years,” he said.

The successful e-health trial has just been completed by five of Australia’s healthcare messaging vendors - Argus Connect, Global Health, Healthlink, LRS Health, and Medical Objects – in collaboration with General Practices, the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) and associated government agencies.

The trial tested the use of Secure Message Delivery (SMD) capabilities.

According to a Health Department spokeswoman, the total number of PCEHR users was 397,745 as at June 30. She could not reveal the average number of logins for last month.

That represents a whopping increase of 313,196 registrations last month alone, compared with 84,549 at the end of May.

As federal Health Minister Peter Dutton yesterday described the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record as "meaningless", documents obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information laws give new insight into the failure of this technological revolution.

In the past seven months, only five vendors have passed the requirements for their software to be connected to the live e-health production platform. There are more than 250 software vendors who need their 300-400 products certified for the PCEHR.

Some have warned that the opt-in, personally controlled e-health system, designed as an online summary of people's health information, risks becoming a white elephant.

Patients decide who can gain access to their e-health record and it allows them to view and control information added to their record by doctors or other healthcare professionals.

A Department of Health grants report shows NEHTA had an extension to Council of Australian Governments funding from June 5 to June 30 next year.

US software firm MMRGlobal has alleged the government agency infringed its patents. MMR has hired legal firm Rockwell Olivier.