E-Health Cluster Forum: Personally controlled health records, e-Health and the future: what’s happening, where are we headed?

What do personally controlled e-health records mean for ICT the Health? Where are we now, and what's happening next? Come to NICTA and find out on June 28.

NICTA’s e-Government and e-Health Clusters, in collaboration with AIIA and CollabIT, are providing a lunch forum on e-Health to give an update on what’s happening “on the ground” and “over the horizon” regarding e-Health in Australia. This forum is aimed at ICT and health companies and is open to the general public.


This is the first E-Health Cluster event held in Canberra, and we welcome everyone!

Details:
When: 11:00am, June 28
Where: NICTA Canberra Research Lab, Ground Floor, 7 London Cct Canberra
Free registration at the E-Health Cluster

Rural and Remote Tele-Health

We'll be in Cairns Sunday through Tuesday, presenting at the HISA Rural and Remote Telehealth conference. Presentation topic? What does it mean to include cloud in telehealth. This is based on recent work NICTA carried out for the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families. It's also the first time I'm using Prezi... if the presentation survives, we'll post a link after the show.

May 30: Here is the presentation.
May 30: The Health Informatics Society of Australia is live-blogging the workshop. Have a look

Free Seminar: eHealth, and the Austrian Institute of Technology

Seminar at Canberra Research Laboratory, by Karl Kreiner

Wed, Dec 15, 2pm NICTA seminar room (ground floor) map
Dr. Karl Kreiner

The seminar will outline work that is being undertaking by the Austrian Institute of Technology, in relation to eHealth, and Dr. Kreiner’s work both here in Australia and in Austria, in particular recent work presented at the Global Telehealth Conference in Perth.

Dr. Kreiner is currently based in Canberra, the talk will run for 20 minutes.

All welcome

Australian Federal Budget, e-health announcements

Two new ehealth initiatives have been announced as part of the Australian Federal budget. Combined they represent a move toward more detailed (smarter?) health and medicine monitoring.

eHealth — personally controlled electronic health records [AUD$466.7m]

"Australians will be able to check their medical history online through the introduction of personally controlled electronic health records, which will boost patient safety, improve health care delivery, and cut waste and duplication."

more info from the Department of Health and Aging.

Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement [AUD$15.4b]

"The measure will also provide funding of $375.3 million over six years (including $91.8 million in 2014‑15) to implement new initiatives under the agreement. These include:

• a range of new patient‑focused pharmacy programs including patient medication monitoring (at a cost of $285.5 million);
• a 15 cent payment to pharmacists for every prescription processed electronically with a National E‑Health Transition Authority specifications (at a cost of $82.6 million); and
• collection of data on pharmaceuticals that are priced below the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme general co‑payment (currently $33.30) including patient, prescriber and dispenser demographic data (at a cost of $7.2 million)."

more from the budget papers (paper 2)

re-post: Nurses say technology can cut lost time

From the E-Health Insider

Finding missing equipment and misplaced patient records is costing the NHS an estimated £1 billion a year in wasted nurses' time. Better use of tracking technologies and electronic records have been identified by nurses as having the potential to cut waste and improve patient safety.

The UK’s 400,000 secondary care nurses are spending almost four hours each week searching for medication, patient records and medical devices according to the survey by GS1 UK, in conjunction with the Nursing Standard.

• A quarter of the 861 hospital nurses surveyed said that patient records and lab results go missing at least once a day.
• Nearly a third (31%) believed that the use of physical patient records, instead of electronic systems, are responsible for causing problems with patient care.
• Nurses said better use of tracking technology could help reduce patient safety incidents – 44% of nurses felt that bar-coded wristbands would reduce patient safety incidents by over 50%.

more

Eric Topol: The wireless future of medicine

Eric Topol says we'll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. At TEDMED, he highlights several of the most important wireless devices in medicine's future -- all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.

Much of the new data is likely to be streamed via wireless networks to and from smart phones, from small sensors in and around the human body. See the TED talk for more info.

$60m Australian e-health initiative

Federal Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, called for proposals to deliver innovative digital services for regional, rural and remote Australia. "The $60 million Digital Regions Initiative will fund projects that deliver high-quality digital applications for education, health and emergency services supported by the National Broadband Network," Senator Conroy said.

At the Minister's address at the National E-Health Conference, he noted the healthcare sector is expected to be one of the major new employment and income drivers in the emerging digital economy.

According to IBM and Access Economics, the adoption of smart technologies in health, as well as electricity, irrigation, transport and high-speed broadband, will add more than 70,000 jobs to the Australian economy in 2014 alone.

Meanwhile, National ICT Australia, our world-class ICT research facility and PhD program, is also leading innovation in the e-health field.

One project of particular interest is the Human Performance Monitoring project, which could deliver some serious benefits for the way we understand the human body.

The system uses wearable and implantable devices connected by wireless and backed by smart processors to assess physical performance.

Information such as heart rate and breathing is captured and analysed instantly, helping doctors to identify patterns.

Senator Conroy invited "innovators who understand the transformative potential of digital technologies" to proposals forward.

The full press release is available, along with the Minister's speech and a news report covering the announcement.