Nicola Roxon reveals e-health grant winners
/ 0
INSURER Medibank Private and eight other tried and tested health IT sites will share up to $55 million allocated by the federal government for e-health trials.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the nine sites were chosen as they would bring early benefits to mothers with newborn babies, people living with chronic diseases, and patients in aged and palliative care facilities.
The successful bidders include Pharmacy Guild-controlled FRED IT, former HealthConnect trial sites in the Northern Territory, Tasmania and Brisbane, a NSW pilot site for the abandoned Healthelink project and three leading hospitals.
As foreshadowed in The Australian today, funding grants will be provided to the "second wave" e-health winners, who will become fast-followers of the three lead sites -- GP Partners in Brisbane, GP Access in the NSW Hunter Valley and Melbourne East.
"These projects will provide practical examples of how e-health can improve healthcare," Ms Roxon said. "Most importantly, they will help reduce the chance of medical errors and save patients from having to repeat their health history whenever they see a new doctor."
Brisbane would become "an e-health super site", she said, with the GP divisions of Brisbane South and Ipswich/West Moreton aligning with the previously announced Brisbane North lead site (trading as GP Partners), and local hospitals.
"These (additional) sites will lead the roll out of personally controlled e-health records for a wide range of patients including Indigenous Australians in the NT, Western Australia and South Australia, chronic disease patients in Sydney and aged care and palliative patients in NSW, the ACT and Tasmania," she said.
"Along with the three lead sites, we’re aiming to have more than half a million Australians enrolled before the national launch next year."
Ms Roxon announced the successful bidders, from a field of more than 90 applications, at Medibank Health Solutions’ office in Melbourne today.
Medibank Private will be funded to introduce a personally controlled e-health record (PCEHR) and personal health diary for members, called Health Book.
The government-owned health insurer last year boosted its e-health services business with the $109m purchase of phone and web-based medical call centre leader McKesson’s local arm.
Medibank Private chief executive George Savvides said the project would initially focus on members enrolled in the fund’s health management and chronic disease programs, enabling them to record their own health data.
"Members will be able to access their own Health Book, which will combine their medical records with a diary to help them better understand their healthcare needs," he said.
"Over time, Health Books will include chronic disease management plans, medical test results, and prompts to remind people of appointments."
And, in a bid to boost e-prescribing and medication management, government has funded the FRED IT MedView project, based around Geelong.
In a pharmacy first, the aim is to provide a solution that allows doctors to see a combined list of prescribed and dispensed medications no matter how many doctors or pharmacies a patient has attended.
Meanwhile, Mater Health Services in Brisbane will develop a PCEHR for mothers and newborns in their maternity department, while a project by St Vincent’s and Mater Health in Sydney will deliver key communication capabilities between the hospitals and GPs for health summaries and electronic referrals.
The Sydney project involves solving interoperability problems between two local shared e-health record systems from developers Smart Health Solutions and Precedence Healthcare.
NSW Health’s Greater Western Sydney e-Health Consortium will focus on high priority consumer groups in the culturally diverse population; its work will include secure messaging, e-referrals and a medical imaging repository.
Medical providers in western Sydney previously participated in the state’s e-health record pilot involving children aged up to 15 years; Healthelink has not expanded beyond the initial sites. The second pilot, involving patients aged 65 and over, took place in the Hunter Valley.
NT Health will build on its previous successful projects to expand access to a PCEHR-aligned shared record within remote communities, by linking up with six WA hospitals in the Kimberleys and Aboriginal controlled health services in SA.
Calvary Health Care in the ACT and the Tasmanian North West Area Health Service will each target aged care and palliative care patients, with the aim of sharing information between treating specialists and nursing staff. These projects will test existing e-health services against the new national PCEHR standards.
A spokesman for Ms Roxon said the nine organisations had been subject to a competitive process by the Health department and the National e-Health Transition Authority.
"All organisations managing these projects will now develop their final plans over the next eight weeks," he said. "They must ensure their work programs clearly meet national objectives before receiving final payments for project implementation."
The government will spend $467m on the PCEHR program, due for launch mid-next year.
