As the hoo-ha over My Health Record dies down, this week the industry turned its attention back to a problem that has dogged the Australian healthcare system for well over a decade: secure messaging interoperability, or lack thereof, and the continued reliance on paper for clinical communication between different settings.
New Zealand is well on the way to solving this problem because it primarily uses one messaging service but also because its Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) has managed to get consensus within the industry on standards for messaging along with code sets, security and privacy. New Zealand also has the benefit of a mature National Health Index (NHI) patient identifier and its associated health practitioner index.
For those among us who have despaired at the bungled, fumbled, laborious roll-out of the My Health Record over the last seven years, have we got news for you! The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has decided to take a look at the implementation of the system in all its gory details, and you get to have your say.
The ANAO has announced it is holding an audit to “assess the effectiveness of the Australian Digital Health Agency's implementation of the My Health Record system”. The audit will not cover the merits of government policy, it says, but it does have a role in assessing the efficient and effective implementation of government programs. You have until April 14 to have a say, with a report to be delivered in October.
It has been a bit quiet on the health IT front recently but things were enlivened somewhat this week with another eruption of the ongoing turf war between doctors and pharmacists. No sooner had a brief announcement of a partnership between health insurer Bupa and the newly merged TerryWhite Chemmart been released than the AMA decided to arc up, thundering about how it threatened the very foundations of general practice.
It's doubtful that there's really much cause for concern over a vague agreement on reducing some costs for medications and supplies for Bupa health fund members, combined with a bit of encouragement to take part in in-pharmacy health screening programs pharmacies and the promise of a dinky new health app, but the AMA let fly nonetheless.
In a nice bit of timing, Pulse+IT asked readers in our poll last week whether, following Greg Hunt's ill-advised comment that he could guarantee the My Health Record won't be hacked, you thought health data security could ever be guaranteed. Nope, the vast majority of you said, and just as well as more details emerged about the ransomware attack on the Melbourne Heart Group cardiology practice in January.
The big news this week came out of the ginormous HIMSS exhibition in Orlando, Florida, which Pulse+IT's resident jetsetter attended for the first time. Mr Jetsetter insists the rumours are scurrilous but we hear he took the mammoth task of visiting the hundreds if not thousands of booths in his stride by touring them at his leisure on a Segway.
Mr Jetsetter reports back that the size of the exhibition and the number of attendees was astounding, with loads of antipodeans in attendance but the Segway doing it tough trying to avoid knocking anyone over. In the end, Mr Jetsetter is of the opinion that the exhibition side of HIMSS is more of a networking opportunity for health IT blokes than anywhere that serious business is being carried out.
The Australian Digital Health Agency and the Department of Health put on a brave face at Senate Estimates this week when they popped up yet again to be interrogated about the My Health Record. A couple of hours earlier ADHA had quietly released details on the number of people who had opted out of the system, and at 9.9 per cent of the eligible population, representing about 2.5 million people, it was not a figure they seemed keen on shouting from the rooftops.
Their defence of the number seems to have changed as well. Asked how the figure of 9.9 per cent opting out compared to international experience, ADHA CEO Tim Kelsey told Senate Estimates that as Australia was leading the world with a system that provides patients with control over their record, there was nothing really to compare it to.
One of our most popular stories this week was Medibank's announcement that the insurer would trial a new health and wellbeing app with its staff before offering it for free to customers and the general public.
Called Live Better, the app will able to combine data from health devices along with wearables like Fitbits and wellbeing apps all in one location. Medibank customers will be offered the incentive of earning points for using the app and achieving goals that can then be used to reduce premiums.
