The Power, the Glory and the Dangers of structured health data
It is now over eighteen months since I publicly aired my grave concerns regarding a critical safety issue for Australia’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) system, which centred around the lack of scrutiny of the quality of data in … Continue reading
Sharing the Spin
My spin detector spun into the red zone last week following an article posted on a well known commentary web site in the Australian e-health space. The article opened with:- “As the adoption of the personal e-health record (PCEHR) in Australia … Continue reading
Critical Safety Issue for the PCEHR
Australia is poised to produce a system of Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHRs) from July 2012, some 6 months from now. According to the recently published Concept of Operations, each person’s PCEHR will comprise a set of electronic documents, … Continue reading
PCEHR launch to the moon
During the Health Informatics Conference in Brisbane in August 2011, the CEO of Australia’s National E-health Transition Authority, Peter Fleming, likened building the national system of Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) to putting a man on the moon.Well let’s … Continue reading
Building on the RIGHT foundations
I have, on a number of occasions over the past decade, tried to explain the importance of building software, systems, national infrastructure, etc. on the right foundations. Other people who do this in the e-health arena often talk purely about … Continue reading
Surfing the PCEHR Waves
Well, it’s just a little over 14 months till the launch of Australia’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR). And we have already seen two ‘waves’ of grant funded ‘implementations’ announced by Health Minister Nicola Roxon. The PCEHR draft ‘Concept of … Continue reading
A problem that can’t be sugar coated
Background With the burgeoning prevalence of diabetes mellitus in Australia and many other countries, there has been an accompanying increase in blood tests for its diagnosis and treatment. One of the commonest tests used is for determining the average amount … Continue reading
What the Dickens?
It is now almost 5 years since the Australian Government launched its 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government: A New Service Agenda, and over a year since the “Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0″ Report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce was handed … Continue reading
Bridging the Gaps
Implementing a national Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system through grant funded proposals submitted by interested parties seems to me a strange way to implement national infrastructure of any kind. It might be a common mechanism for funding projects … Continue reading
Hiatus in Global HL7 CDA Challenge
Well it is now several months since I established the Global HL7 Challenge and the deadline for the first part of the challenge has just passed with no respondents. I can only put this down to a global lack of … Continue reading