Ripple: the personal media revolution for health

The Joneses: masters of
ripple [wikipedia]

Health IT is awash with predictions of the "next big thing" being one of any number of ICT-inspired leaps forward.


Some recent predictions from Vector blog seem quite likely to occur in the near future.  As Keeley Wray wrote in Vector blog, Advanced computing + healthcare = disruptive change.  "...healthcare has been a dinosaur when it comes to using advanced computational approaches.  But I think in the near future we will see measurable change." 


In Keeley's post, the big trends are visualisation, patient empowerment through open data, and knowledge engines providing the "smarts".

Whilst it is likely that any of the predicted trends for health + IT will be "disruptive" the biggest change will come through the impact that all these trends have by occurring simultaneously. Think perfect storm. We'll look into this after the jump.

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%.

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