The Australian General Practice Network wants $3.6 million for an immediate national rollout of the Argus secure clinical messaging system to link doctors, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies.
"Work is under way to determine the requirements for an integrated e-health network, but it's still a long way off," network chief executive Kate Carnell said. "The use of secure electronic messaging provides an immediate solution. Argus is a licensed open-source product that is freely available, with intellectual property owned by the Government."
More than 50 of 117 divisions of general practice already use the Australian-developed ArgusConnect system for exchanging clinical information.
Ms Carnell said the network was well placed to help connect GPs with local hospitals, at a cost of $30,000 per division.
The Health Informatics Society of Australia is seeking less than $1 million for an industry-led program that would fix IT inter-operability problems that hamper communications between existing systems.
The society hopes to establish a local chapter of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), a global initiative that resolves technical issues by getting rival vendors to work together without commercial tensions. Society chief executive Brendan Lovelock said the proposal grew out of the "inter-operability demos we've been running" at trade shows.
Dr Lovelock said seed funding would be needed to introduce the IHE scenarios and create standards, but the model would then be self-funding.
The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association is seeking an urgent deployment of a $200 million electronic medication management system in all public hospitals.
This would produce real savings, as drug errors result in 80,000 hospital admissions a year, costing about $350 million.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 22.01.2008
