The pain for the locked down people of NSW continued this week and got worse on Friday, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian calling the situation in her state a national emergency, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews calling for a ring of steel around greater Sydney and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern bursting the trans-Tasman bubble and rolling up the shutters on quarantine-free travel for the next two months.
Yesterday, Ms Berejiklian pleaded with Sydneysiders to get vaccinated, including under 40s to consider getting AstraZeneca, which Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the state was “awash” with. “If you’re under 40 and want AstraZeneca, please, please check with your GP,” she said. “If your GP gives you the green light, please get the vaccine. Please, please, come forward and get vaccinated.”
Our blog from last week on the difficulties some people have had trying to find and book in for a vaccination took on extra meaning this week, as metropolitan Sydney’s outbreak worsened and Melbourne snapped into a hopefully short and sharp lockdown. Vaccination is the key to all of us getting out of this, but besides the problem with adequate supply in Australia and late supply in New Zealand, it’s our IT systems that we are relying on to help us navigate our way out of disaster.
NSW Health’s systems are among those that have come in for a lot of criticism, and confusion still reigns over what exactly they plan to do about it, but we have also been closely watching what each state and territory in Australia is doing, along with the national system in New Zealand.
On 20 March 2020, Australia closed its international borders as case numbers of COVID-19 exploded around the globe. Fifteen months later, NSW Health has still not been able to deliver a robust booking system to support the state’s vaccination efforts, with the current mashup of hastily implemented technology riddled with problems.
As is also the case for other Australians, to attempt to book their vaccination, NSW residents start their digital journey at the HealthDirect website where they input some basic information into an online Vaccine Eligibility Checker.
The IT solutions behind Australia’s and New Zealand’s COVID-19 responses have come in for some questioning over the 18 months of the pandemic, and no one seems to agree on whether they have proven to be effective or not, whether it be mobile phone proximity apps like Australia’s COVIDsafe (general consensus: dud) or QR code check-in systems (thumbs up).
They all do appear to be quite expensive though, which is nothing new, and as always when there are copious amounts of public money on offer, hands immediately reach out. This has never been more true than in the roll-out of online booking, inventory management, and vaccination registration systems on a jurisdictional and national scale.
Problems appear to be continuing to beset Far North Queensland’s Regional eHealth Project (ReHP), a long-winded drama first touted in 2012 which has officially come to an end at a cost of $34.5 million (at least according to the state’s very useful Digital Projects Dashboard).
Funding was originally obtained in 2012 from a federal government hospital investment grant, although the project itself only really kicked off in 2015, with the aim of building a primary and community care-focused eHealth solution for about 58 clinics and small hospitals in the Cairns, Cape York and Torres Strait regions.
Much has been said over the last 18 months about how the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a revolution in digital health adoption, but there’s a chance these predictions might turn out to be a bit overhyped, particularly when it comes to telehealth (or telephone health as it probably should be named for now).
What has become more obvious as the pandemic has drawn out is the benefit of automation when it comes to health service efficiency, especially in under-the-radar areas like practice management system interoperability, which may well trigger longer term benefits than the tech du jour.
Pulse+IT collectively choked on its early winter porridge this week when we read an edition of the Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column which touted the sale of general practice management system vendor MedicalDirector by its private equity owners for the astoundingly silly sum of $500 million.
As we have noted before, anyone seriously considering that sort of money for a middle-sized Australian medical software firm needs to have their heads read. The Fin was quoting $300m three years ago and we hear this is closer to what is being asked for today, but it is still a highly optimistic valuation for a company that is not really going anywhere in a hurry.
