Professor Fiona Stanley, director of Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, and a visiting academic at at the University of Western Australia, says online processes would have helped a coordinated response to the pandemic.
'One of the keys to protecting the public is finding out who is sick, who is healthy, who has died, and where they live, work, shop or go to school,' Professor Stanley told The Australian.
Eric Meslin, Director of the Indiana University Centre for Bioethics, says US President Barack Obama had committed billions of dollars to converting hardcopy medical records to softcopies, enabling the easy communication of patient data between healthcare professionals.
'If we had complete population data, individual health would improve as personal health records would ensure medical histories, prescriptions, test results and hospital results were accurately kept and available to healthcare providers,' the pair told The Australian.
State health authorities have faced criticism over the handling of swine flu cases, with suggestions that hospitals and GPs were unprepared for the issue and were not keeping the public properly informed of developments.
NSW Health in particular faced sharp criticism after more than 2,000 passengers were allowed to disembark from cruise ship Pacific Dawn in Sydney, despite 130 people displaying flu-like symptoms at the time.
Subsequent testing has revealed no cases of N1H1 virus on board, says Carnival Australia CEO Ann Sherry, whose company operates P O Cruises.
The luxury liner has since travelled to Brisbane and is due to return to Sydney on Monday, where passengers will be scanned and screened before they disembark.
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Quelle/Source: Sky News Australia, 31.05.2009
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