Aussie IT health initiative widely praised
Aussie IT health initiative widely praised
An initiative that aims to utilise IT to transform the way the healthcare sector manages consumer health information has been broadly welcomed by IT health professionals.
HealthConnect is a system that - with consumer consent - will allow the electronic exchange of clinical information between healthcare providers.
Work on a staged implementation of HealthConnect, which will be backed by the Australian Government to the tune of $128 million over the next four years, begins this month, with Tasmania and South Australia the first states to be involved in the implementation project.
"We welcome this initiative as a sign of ‘joined up thinking’ at all levels of government," said Steve Keys, director, business development at project management software provider Primavera. "Health Connect is really about improving quality and safety in healthcare by ensuring client information is made available as and when needed. In this respect Health Connect is an important, if not critical, project that deserves the proper application of project management culture, processes and technology; from design through to execution, delivery, implementation and benefits realisation."
"HealthConnect as an initiative is a positive step forward for the Australian health community in that it is developing a framework in which providers and the general public can begin to feel confident that sensitive and potentially personal health information can be confidently moved between providers of services without compromising the most basic of concerns - information privacy and security," said Gavin Wright, head of New Zealand Health Information Technology Cluster, a group that includes health software vendors, healthcare providers, universities and government policy advisors who undertake advanced technical research for the healthcare sector, and provides integrated health information solutions to healthcare customers worldwide.
To find out more about the HealthConnect initiative, see the July/August issue of IDM magazine.
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