Health Minister Nicola Roxon says that by 2012, Australians will have internet access to a "personally controlled e-health record", with the initial funding paying for core infrastructure and regulatory arrangements.
The aim is a summary of critical medical information accessible in an emergency and shared by patients with their healthcare providers.
This approach overcomes consent and privacy issues, as patients have control over their sensitive health information, but it's far from the rigorously controlled national individual e-health record system long advocated and costed at $1.6 billion over four years.
So far, Roxon has been unable to explain exactly what Australians will get for half a billion dollars, and has refused to confirm or deny speculation that the only way personally controlled records could be delivered now is via a commercial platform such as Microsoft's HealthVault or Google Health. "All Australians who choose to participate will be able to register online from 2012-13," Roxon told Weekend Health. "The detailed design of personally controlled e-health records will be undertaken in extensive consultation with consumers, healthcare providers and industry.
"The funding means we can build the essential elements of this secure system over the next two years."
Under a commercial model, personal health records could be offered by third parties such as health insurers or private clinics; patients might also need to pay for their records.
Despite the tight timeframe, a Health Department spokeswoman insists the deadline is feasible. But no other information was forthcoming.
According to Steve Hodgkinson, senior researcher with Ovum, an IT research consultancy: "Industry reaction is typified by confusion as to exactly what the system will achieve and how it will operate in practice; $466.7m seems either too litttle or too much -- too little to actually create a national e-health records system that is efficiently integrated into the hundreds of IT systems within the sectorand too much to be prudently spent in such a short time given the complexity of the situation."
Consumers Health Forum executive director Carol Bennett says patient-owned e-health records are "a vital part of restructuring our health system", providing some "digital glue" for reform, and calls for broad support for the initiative.
"Anyone who has a number of health conditions, takes several medicines and uses a range of services will tell you stories of errors and omissions -- some potentially life-threatening -- because of inadequate recordkeeping and sharing," she says.
Bennett warns that it's easy to run a scare campaign on privacy concerns, "and those who do should explain how the health system can continue with millions of paper files and fragmented, incompatible computer record systems".
Australian Privacy Foundation health spokeswoman Juanita Fernando welcomes the recognition for e-health but finds the approach strange.
"The budget promotes personal control of health information, yet the government supports a centralised national ID number," she says.
Under the HI bill, deferred until June, 16-digit unique healthcare identifiers will be issued to all Australians for use on their records by medical providers.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: The Australian, 15.05.2010
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