Telstra has launched its rapidly growing eHealth division into Asia, winning two key contracts worth tens of millions of dollars in Thailand and Malaysia.
Telstra Health is one of the company's key hopes for growing profits as the national broadband network erodes its earnings and rising mobile service competition from Optus and Vodafone Australia threaten to hurt revenue.
The latest deals signal a bold new push for the telco and forms a new plank of its strategy to extract billions of dollars from Asia's increasingly affluent middle class.
Weiterlesen: AU: Telstra bets on e-health to become billion dollar business
Criminals getting in without Australia knowing about their convictions
Australia's Parliament has passed a law that will make it possible to collect biometric data, from citizens and visitors alike, at the nation's borders.
The Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015, an amendment to the Migration Act of 1958, is explained as an effort to “streamline seven existing personal identifier collection powers into a broad, discretionary power to collect one or more personal identifiers from non-citizens, and citizens at the border.”
Weiterlesen: Australia to capture biometrics at the border under new law
The hospitalisation of thousands of people each year could be prevented if their health providers shared information electronically, but they can't because their software systems do not talk to each other.
About 230,000 people are admitted to Australian hospitals every year as a result of medication misadventures.
The federal government's top advisor on e-health said poor communication between nurses, GPs, emergency staff, pharmacists and other health professionals resulted in thousands of preventable hospitalisations and deaths because patients were doubling up on medication or taking the wrong drugs.
Weiterlesen: AU: Slow progress on e-health causing medication misadventures
Mobile health can be an effective tool to address Australia’s healthcare challenges, however, adoption is fraught with obstacles and continues to be skewed towards consumer ended offerings, research analyst firm Frost & Sullivan said in a report.
A key issue is access to timely and, which it says can potentially be addressed by enhancing and improving communication between providers and patients using mobile health (mHealth).
In an Australian first, the State Government plans to establish a whole-of-Government Data Analytics Centre.
Announcing the plan, Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation, Victor Dominello (pictured) said data was one of the greatest assets held by Government, but when it was buried away in bureaucracy it was of little value.
Mr Dominello said a specialist Steering Committee would be advising on the establishment of the Centre and an industry Advisory Body would assist in guiding its ongoing work.