Here Is An Opportunity To Possibly Make A Difference To Australia’s E-Health Future. Grasp It.

After a little hunting around I have confirmed that there is definitely a revamp of the National E-Health Strategy being undertaken - as mentioned by the Pharmacy Guild President last week

See here:

http://www.pharmacynews.com.au/opinion/future-of-e-health-hinges-on-election-result

Word is that there is a pretty tight deadline, given that - despite what the pollies say - we are rapidly running up towards a Federal Election on September 14, 2013. Indeed in the article cited it is made clear that there will be major electoral influences on the direction after that date!

The reason I am discussing all this is because of three things:

1. There are a lot of readers of this blog who have direct access to DoHA etc. who will have commissioned this work.

2. The overall readership of this blog has the best, on the ground, understanding of what is working, what is not, and what we should do next and what we should scrap / modify / defer.

3. Over the last year or two the quality and scope of comments on this blog has been genuinely spectacular in terms of wisdom, insight and practicality.

The bottom line is that those who bother to assemble and upload a few ideas, suggestions can be assured they will be assessed and considered in the now underway process.

For me the following issues are the key ones.

1. How can we make governance of the e-Health actually take notice of all relevant stakeholders and how can be put in place sensible, dynamic leadership of the overall endeavour?

2. How will we be able to assess of what has been done to date in the e-Health domain what has worked and needs to be sustained, what needs to be modified and what needs to be simply canned? Once determined how will these decisions be actioned? What will be the best way to preserve and extend the successful initiatives?

3. How can we obtain real engagement of clinicians in the development and shaping of what is done in the future to ensure investment is made to achieve real positive outcomes for patients rather than the token consultation we have so often seen to date?

4. How can we get in place a real focus on ensuring that all e-Health interventions are actually evidence based?

5. How can we prevent hollowing out of the private vendor community via re-design of procurement and delivery processes?

6. How can we re-energise, support, foster and re-empower the Health IT Standards development processes?

7. How can we best take advantage of what has and is being learnt about the issues and difficulties associated with e-Health implementation in the real world as well as the issues around usability, Health IT Safety around the world? (2 pages outlining international trends hardly cuts it!)

Enough from me. Over to you to let us all know what you think! Remember this is probably a once in a five year period opportunity - given the last revision was 2008!

David.