Dear HISA Member

I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable New Year. It has been a busy holiday period for health informatics, with the change in government driving large numbers of health organisations to work overtime clarifying their plans and establish their requirements for the coming year. Over the December/January period this rush of activity has included:

• The release of the Boston Consulting groups review of NEHTA and NEHTA's response to the review (see NEHTA's action plan for adoption success in the news feed later in this letter)
• Federal and State ministers meeting to allocate the $150 million to the reduction of waiting lists
• The release of NEHTA's Australian Medicines Terminology AMTv1.0
• The contract between Medicare and and NEHTA for the development of the Unique Healthcare Identifier (UHI)
• The debate over the implications of the UHI on privacy and the need for broader engagement of healthcare providers and consumers
• HISA prebudget submission to the Treasurer with its focus on the need for a plan and shared vision, along with funding for education and a grass roots interoperability (IHE) process.

You can find all these articles in the news feed further on in this newsletter.

HISA Submissions

HISA has also been very busy over the holiday period. Apart from putting together our prebudget submission (click here to download) HISA has also submitted its preliminary report to the Australian Law Reform Commission. We are still working on the final document for this submission which should be available over the coming few weeks.

We have had a strong media response from the prebudget submission. You can find these news articles by going to the HISA and clicking on the links in the "HISA In The News" section on the HISA home page.

IHE Australia

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is a further extension the interoperability demonstration that we have been conducting at the HIC conference over the past few years. IHE defines a formal process of bringing vendors together within closely defined operational scenarios (profiles) to allow these companies to improve the interoperability of their systems using the applications of standards such as HL7 and DICOM.

HISA has been working with HL7, MSIA and RANZCR to establish IHE in Australia. Peter MacIsaac is leading this program, which has already established a number of milestones, including the delivery of the first IHE conference in Australia in December (focusing on portable imaging standards) and the registration of the founding Australian IHE organisations with IHE international.

Work is now underway gathering vendors together and starting the IHE process that will go through workshops, a connectathon and finally culminate in the Interoperability demonstration at this years HIC08 in Melbourne. Peter will be in the US over the next few weeks observing their connectathon process and bringing some of the techniques back to Australia. You can find out more about IHE Australia at http://www.ihe.net.au/ .

Coalition for Health Informatics

Last year HISA released its study "A Vision for an Australian Healthcare System Transformed by Health Informatics". (click here to download) . This document has served as a catalyst to bring a broad range of organisations together to grapple with a fundamental underlying issue of eHealth, that is, Australia's lack of a clear and shared vision of the eHealth system that we are looking to deliver and the absence of a plan how to get there.

While the work of NEHTA is undeniably important in delivering eHealth, it's development of the building blocks of standards and infrastructure is somewhat akin to creating the foundations of a house without knowing what the house is going to look like. Australia needs to develop the debate around the eHealth system we are pursuing, both across the providers of health services and amongst health consumers. The changes driven by eHealth systems are going to fundamentally impact the personal lives of us all, and there needs to be stronger, coordinated engagement to ensure we arrive at the health system we are all really looking for.

The Coalition, comprising the leading the health related associations and colleges in Australia, will be meeting in February to discuss this issue of a shared vision and plan. Already is considerable support for crafting a way to work together on this issue.

A interesting example of how this issue is being progressed in the US is the eHealth Initiative. It is worthwhile having a look at their site (http://www.ehealthinitiative.org/ ). In particular have a look at the Blue Print for eHealth (http://www.ehealthinitiative.org/blueprint/), which was the document we drew heavily upon to build our original eHealth vision survey.

Board Nomination

We have had a fantastic response to the request for nominations caused by the resignation of one of the HISA Board Members. There have been 6 nominations of outstanding quality. The Board will be meeting on the 7th of February to decide on the person to fill this role.

HIC'08

Remember to put August 31st through to September 2 in your diary for HIC'08. With the theme of "The Person in the Centre", HIC'08 is further building on HISA's initiative of engaging a broad cross section of healthcare providers, government, industry and consumers in defining Australia's eHealth future.

This year you we are broadening the conference by incorporating a stream of non peer reviewed presentations. The objective is to capture the eHealth innovation that is occurring out in the healthcare community. Presentations will be selected by the Scientific Program Committee, and they should be instructive to the audience on how to achieve significant improvements in health outcomes through the innovative application of health informations systems, process and technologies. People and groups submitting these presentations will also be eligible for selection in the Don Walker Awards. For more information see http://www.hisa.org.au/hic08applications .

 

The 10th Annual AFR Health Congress

Dockside Sydney -- 27- 29 February 2008
10% discount for HISA members

For the 10th successive year the AFR Health Congress convenes a premier forum of industry leaders and experts to examine the challenges to our healthcare system and debate the need for reform and new directions.

For more information you can go to the HISA events site (click here) or go directly to the conference website at www.informa.com.au/healthcongress

The HISA Online News site

We have been active over the last few months developing a news service that could bring you current Australian and international eHealth news stories. Today is the official launch of our new system. You may have noticed a new block of information under the heading "Health IT News" on the top right hand side of our HISA home page. In here you can access feeds from over 170 websites and blogs that deal with Health IT issues. You can also access this news service from the links on the left hand side of this page.

We have grouped these sites into areas of common interest and used our search engine to refine the articles that are presented on each page. The news sites are updated every hour and the articles are archived for 16 weeks. What you see on the site are the top articles in chronological order.

I hope you find these services useful. There is an RSS link at the bottom of each news page, so you can link to the output and have it appear on your RSS system on your desktop.

We have also changed the newsletter. We are now listing fewer articles, but we are providing an introduction to each piece. We have also placed our event calendar on this page so you can quickly see what is coming up (just drop me an email if you want to place on event on the site). Over the next few months, using the feedback from our readers, we will further refine the articles that are presented and the layout of the page, please contact me (see details below) with any suggestions on how we can improve the service.

 

Best regards

 

Brendan Lovelock
CEO
Health Informatics Sociey of Australia
email: brendan.lovelock@hisa.org.au
Ph: 613-9388-0555

Australian Health IT News