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 in the arts, and for scientific research, where we don’t know what we might end […]

Well, two themes dominated the two day e-health summit in Melbourne this week:- Infectious enthusiasm vagueness of the PCEHR These two themes actually run hand in glove. Both the vagueness of the PCEHR model and the rampant optimism are in large part due to ignorance. There was an endless supply of fresh consumer, bureaucrat and […]

Just a whisker over 10 years ago, closely following the release of the National Electronic Health Records Task Force’s  landmark report, but before “e-health” or “electronic health records” became household words,  a National Health Online Summit was held in Adelaide. It seems like Australia has taken a few steps forward, but possibly even more  backwards, […]

Whilst we linger in the doldrums of the post-election impasse, there have been some interesting media articles regarding e-health in Australia, furnished particularly during the Health Informatics Society of Australia’s annual conference. Although I didn’t attend this year, two particularly disturbing reports have drawn my attention – one by England’s Professor Trisha Greenhalgh, worried (according […]

Why so complex? This is the first of several blogs on the subject of pathology data. Others will cover principles and pragmatic tradeoffs. There are many independent factors associated with diagnostic tests, that when combined, produce an unparalleled level of complexity in data capture, representation and exchange,  when compared with most other subdomains of health. […]

There is a wide spectrum of opinion in Australia regarding how e-health should be progressed. At one end of this spectrum we have the proponents of national-scale, top-down architected and developed infrastructure, such as exemplified by HealthConnect and by the NEHTA work program. At the other end, we have those who believe that such national-scale, […]

NEHTA has published a blueprint for its forthcoming program of work. I’m not sure why they have labelled this  a “blueprint”, rather than a plan. Possibly they have borrowed from Infoway, who have been publishing blueprints for many years, starting back in 2003. Other blogs have already commented on the blueprint, at least here and […]