Of these applications, one of the most critical is e-health, which promises to reduce the cost of healthcare while improving access to health services for all Australians, regardless of location.
The risks, and need for diligence around implementing e-health systems, are high in light of recent failures both locally and overseas.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, annual health expenditure grew by 45 per cent between 1997 and 2007 to reach $4507 per person. With the rising incidence of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, asthma, obesity and diabetes, combined with our ageing population, heath costs are set to soar.
In a bid to enable a more sustainable and flexible healthcare system that delivers quality care into the future, the federal government is investing heavily, committing over $16 billion to reform the healthcare system.
This includes $466.7 million to develop a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record system by July next year. The PCEHR has the potential to enhance the accuracy and availability of healthcare information, improving decision-making and reducing waste.
The National E-Health Transition Authority is managing the PCEHR project, driving the design and implementation. It must balance technical needs with legal and privacy issues to ensure the result is both workable and addresses community concerns.
In Britain, an pound stg. 11bn ($16.5bn) project to deliver e-health records has been a failure after 10 years of problems in which suppliers over-promised and under-delivered.
Meanwhile, a project to roll out the FirstNet system to NSW Emergency Departments has also been plagued by problems.
A report released in March this year by Jon Patrick, head of the University of Sydney's Health Information Technology Research Laboratory, identified many shortcomings in the FirstNet system and the way in which it was implemented.
The report was updated in April after more problems came to light as a result of feedback from emergency department directors.
Professor Patrick, an ACS Fellow and Chair of Language Technology in the university's School of IT, said the supplier was technically incompetent and failed to deliver the solution to the promised level of functionality, but there were too few mechanisms to hold them accountable.
"We need to learn from these failures and take a different approach both to the systems we build and how they are implemented to ensure they are achievable," he said.
In the case of the PCEHR, Professor Patrick says more planning is needed to identify who will own the health records and how they will be used and updated. "In the first instance, we need to approach it more as a personal health diary which is owned and controlled by the patient, who can task medical personnel with adding new material as appropriate."
Professor Patrick said semantic messaging standards must improve in order to deliver the level of automation, reliability and validation needed for a system of this kind to work. "Treating the first incarnation of the PCEHR as a health diary is more realistic and achievable in terms of functionality. Only after we overcome the technical barrier of how to exchange semantic information between systems will the PCEHR be truly possible," he said.
ICT is critical to health reform and the PCEHR is just the beginning. As well as infrastructural elements like the NBN, we want budget allocations for other ICT systems that will be needed to deliver the proposed reforms.
In light of past failures, the ACS is keen to work with the government through NEHTA and other agencies to ensure success in current e-health projects.
The ACS believes that certifying ICT professionals working in e-health reduces risks, as it not only requires those people to prove their knowledge and skills, but also to do ongoing training to maintain their certification.
We see an urgent need for more training places for e-health professionals. Currently, only two Australian universities offer degree programs in health informatics, down from four a few years ago, with about 40 graduates a year.
With demand for e-health professionals set to grow in the coming months and years, this needs to be addressed if Australia is to have the skills needed to drive e-health developments that will leverage the power of the NBN.
Deloitte Consulting says an investment of $2.6bn over 10 years in e-health in Australia will yield a benefit of $5.7bn in net present value over 10 years.
There is also an export opportunity if Australia can create a solution that can be adapted for other healthcare regimes around the world. It's a huge opportunity. Let's make sure we get it right.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Anthony Wong
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 26.07.2011
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