The Coalition for eHealth has now released the letter sent to the Prime Minister. You can download the letter here.

A Review of the Health Informatics Workforce in Australia has been recently undertaken by the Society. The major findings were:

1. There are too few health informaticians for the current workload and unless addressed these workforce and skills shortages will be a major barrier to implementing the National E-Heath Strategy and likely to health reform more generally

2. Too little is known about the health informatics workforce - we know neither how many we have now, nor how many we need, and there is no indication that it is yet part of any national health workforce strategy or the remit of the National Health Workforce Agency

3. There is a fundamental breakdown in the market between employers, education providers and potential workforce entrants - while there is a strong demand by employers for workers, there has been a failure to attract students leading to the closure of well-regarded university courses

4. Because it is an emerging field, health informatics does not have wide recognition as a discipline in its own right; there is a poor general understanding of the knowledge domain in Australia; and many of the workers in clearly related jobs do not yet self-identify

5. There is no career structure for health informaticians in Australia; there is no standardisation of job names or job descriptions and there is no widely adopted set of competencies

6. There will be a long lag time to produce new health informaticians because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the education and the complexity of the discipline - the workforce we do have must be used optimally

7. A contributing factor to the lack of needed recognition and action on health informatics workforce issues is the fragmented representation of those in the discipline

The following documents are now available for download:

A Review of the Australian Health Informatics Workforce - Full - 4.7MB

A Review of the Australian Health Informatics Workforce - Summary - 365kb

HISA congratulates the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission on the delivery of their final report, "A Healthier Future for all Australians" and we support the recommendations detailed in the report. 

We welcome the recognition of e-health as an important element of the reform program and we are looking forward to assisting in the development of the detailed delivery plan. 

It is important to note that the Commission has recognized and supported the submissions made to it by HISA.  In particular, our concern over the need to prioritise the development of Australia's health informatics workforce was specifically identified and supported by the report.   

The Commission has also integrated the key elements from the AHMAC National e-health strategy into their recommendations.  The National e-health strategy is a document that reflected the considerable input of many HISA members and it is a strategy which we strongly support.

HISA looks forward to continuing to contribute to the development and delivery of Australia's national e-health plan and the ongoing improvement in the delivery of care that it supports.

This year there were two very worthy winners of the HISA Don Walker Awards for innovation in health informatics. The winners, announced at HISA's HIC09 Gala Dinner, were:

Don Walker Award for Effectiveness
Grahame Grieve: For leadership in representing Australia in international standards forums

Grahame has represented Australia in International Standards Forums for more than a decade in numerous leadership positions and has helped establish Australia as a major participant at HL7 International and more recently ISO TC 215.

The specific work that has led to this nomination is the development of a set of common data types across the major international e-health standards communities (HL7, ISO, CEN). This work commenced as a project within Standards Australia IT14-9 working group 4 years ago. Grahame was the major author of that work and subsequently developed and refined the data type specifications in consultation with HL7 International and ISO. Along the way he forged the first joint ISO/HL7 balloting process and has shepherded the common data type specification through numerous international ballot cycles. Subsequently, these data types, for the first time, provide the basic common building blocks for interoperability between HL7, ISO and CEN standards.

Don Walker Award for Efficiency:
Pen Computer Systems (John Johnson): Clinical Audit Tool for Primary Care

The Award was for their Clinical Audit Tool (CAT) which is a population reporting tool interoperable with the leading GP Clinical Desktop Systems in Australian general practice. CAT allows all members of the practice team to review their data in new ways for the achievement of best practice and data quality while optimising opportunities for GP's and the Practice to treat their patient's. CAT scrutinises the aggregated patient information of the practice and presents it quickly and accurately in a refreshing graphical format that is easy to understand.

NEW! What is happening at HIC09 right now? Do not miss a thing - follow HIC09 on Twitter!

HISA has released its vision for Australian eHealth.

The document is entitled "A Vision for an Australian
Healthcare System Transformed by Health Informatics". It establishes a vision, assesses the current position and provides a start for a national eHealth plan.

The document discusses the strategic alignment of Australian healthcare in this area, together with the accelerators for moving forward and the issues that could restrict our progress. This report represents the contributions from a large and broad group of those involved in healthcare with extensive knowledge of the eHealth domain.

Click here to download a full copy of the report
Click here to download the executive summary

Also we would welcome further comment and discussion on this topic, just email Louise Schaper at ceo@hisa.org.au

This year saw the start of a new tradition for HISA, with our society recognising excellence in communication on issues of importance in health informatics.  The award was presented by Michael Legg, HISA's President at the HIC09 Gala Dinner.

This year the HISA Media Award was presented to Karen Dearne from News Limited for excellence in journalism.

Karen has been an outstanding contributor to the public discussion on health informatics.  She has provided an important translation of an often technical subject into terms that resonate with Australia's business and consumer communities.