Federal and NT Government projects are yet to deliver a reliable information and communications network, despite years of work and millions of dollars in funding.
NT Health has been working on its Primary Care Information System (PCIS) for almost 10 years.
It is believed to have cost about $60 million to date and is yet to be available in the territory's health clinics.
Yesterday, the federal Health Department was unable to advise how many sites were using the federally funded Point to Point (P2P) secure communication network, managed by the Top End Division of General Practice.
The NT HealthConnect-badged P2P began operation in 2005, and by June last year involved about 50 medical practices. Developers planned to gradually expand the network, which uses the Argus secure email technology, to pathology and radiology services.
It was also to be expanded to more remote areas.
A department spokeswoman was unable to confirm what progress had been made on the P2P project, nor could she advise how visiting medical teams would order diagnostic tests and receive results without electronic access.
"The Australian and NT Governments are working together to identify ways for using existing clinical systems and IT to ensure appropriate information sharing during and after the current initiative," she said.
"Any solution needs to be sustainable and to transition towards the Shared Electronic Health Record (SEHR) being rolled out in the NT to support long-term health outcomes."
Meanwhile, DoHA e-health branch assistant secretary Lisa McGlynn recently told an industry forum that more than 10,000 people in the Katherine area had an active SEHR, as part of the NT Connect program.
According to the latest Census, there are more than 190,000 NT residents, including almost 54,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, who frequently live in remote locations.
A Darwin health provider said the success achieved by Katherine health boards was largely due to their use of a private software firm, which developed a fit-for-purpose community system.
"Perth-based Medisys has developed Communicare to a level that enables patients to go from place to place and have their health record follow them, linked via the internet," he said.
"HealthConnect does seem to have been successful in assisting this process, and therefore may have a place in remote care, but the uptake would not have been possible without Communicare."
Because the Katherine East and West boards were community controlled, they were not bound by NT Government policy and could move ahead but "the other 48 health clinics operated by NT Health have to wait for the PCIS", he said.
Lack of infrastructure for health data networks and limited access to bandwidth have also been identified as problems for fly-in, fly-out medical teams.
Telecoms analyst Paul Budde said the federal Government's competition regime had been "virtually a complete failure in remote areas".
"Telstra is by far the dominant provider throughout the NT. Of 318 communities with a population greater than 20, some 12 per cent have access to ISDN, and 11 per cent have access to mobile telephony," Mr Budde said.
The NT Government was not in a position to fund the "large-scale investments required to catch up to the standards enjoyed in other remote areas", he said.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 03.07.2007
