IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Those projects are yielding a host of benefits, researchers say. For example, Norway, Denmark and Sweden all stand to save between 1.2 billion and 2.5 billion Euros by substituting alert/monitoring systems for elderly patients in place of institutional care.

The new standard will enable different e-health systems to smoothly exchange patient health data in both low- and high-resource settings, making it ideal for applications in both developed and developing countries.

Gore Hospital’s chief executive Karl Metzler told FutureGov that one in five New Zealander lives in a rural or remote area. “We’re exploring robotics technology to manage healthcare, and reduce pressures on our medical system.”

Throughout the world, the growing use of Telehealth is playing its part in supporting integrated health care, empowering patients and bringing health care “closer to home”. It facilitates beneficial changes to the patterns of workforce deployment and enables the delivery of new modes of healthcare delivery such as this Government’s Whanau Ora and Better Sooner More Convenient policies. Telehealth has the potential to reduce demand for high cost services and improve the healthcare of New Zealanders with long-term conditions.

Tom Bowden, chief executive of Auckland-based secure messaging and integration specialist HealthLink, said Australia had failed to do the hard work on building basic capacity, setting standards and improving data quality.

"All the really flash stuff has been worked on and there's been lots of bright ideas, but the real effort is still to be done and we won't see solid progress until that occurs," he said.

Sam Heard, visiting New Zealand from Darwin to talk with groups interested in health IT, is a founding partner in Australian firm Ocean Informatics, developers of a platform for health-information sharing called openEHR.

A first draft national IT plan for health will be made available for sector comment on March 31 and is expected to be finalised by June 30.

Graeme Osborne, chairman of the National Health IT Board, says he expects the government’s Shared Services Agency to take the lead in deciding IT directions “with our support”.

A greater level of district health board funding, supported by national funding, has been called for by the National Health IT Board to pay for proposed health information solutions.

In the 2008/09 financial year the DHBs combined investment in IT projects was $60 million, with the cost of operating and maintaining health IT systems coming in at $170 million.

Health IT strategy got a check-up in Auckland last week and was found to be more than a little septic.

Speaking at the Health Informatics NZ (HINZ) seminar in Auckland last week, Hutt Valley District Health Board chief executive Chai Chuah said the sector was riddled with policies and strategies, many of which were just words without any substance.

Health Minister Tony Ryall has directed the newly formed National Health Board to create the first national IT system for the sector based on achieving the "eHealth vision".

The vision states that to "achieve high-quality health care and improve patient safety, by 2014 New Zealanders will have a core set of personal health information available electronically to them and their treatment providers".

In what Michael Sullivan, telehealth clinical leader for West Coast and Canterbury district health boards, said would be the biggest implementation of telemedicine to date, nurses and GPs on the West Coast will instead be provided with a low-cost system that will let them consult other GPs and specialists in the South Island via video from their desktops.

A new research project will investigate public attitudes towards the sharing of confidential personal health information held in electronic health records.

Researcher Dr Dick Whiddett says the issue is topical and important, given that the Government’s health care strategy provides for more sharing and integration of such information between, for example, general practitioners, hospitals and other agencies.

According to Nicole Denjoy, the Secretary General of COCIR (The European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT Industry), “Evidence is growing that, if left unchanged, Europe’s current healthcare systems will become unsustainable within the next 15 years.” Furthermore, the World Health Organisation (WHO), in its 2010 Health report suggested: “At a time when money is tight, before looking for places to cut spending on healthcare, look first for opportunities to improve efficiency.”

The results from the first New Zealand pilot of telehealth technology have just been released by health innovator Healthcare of New Zealand.

William Hall, who has chronic pulmonary disease and was one of the people who trialled the technology says, “Since I’ve been on telehealth my health has improved dramatically. I got the monitor 12 months ago and if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be here today.”

This week, Healthcare of New Zealand, a leader and innovator in community health provision, in conjunction with Lake Taupo Primary Health organisation (PHO) will launch the first-ever New Zealand telehealth pilot for 10 clients in the Turangi/Taupo area.

Telehealth is a home-based service that assists health professionals to closely monitor a client’s medical condition, and detect changes before they become serious and require hospitalisation.

Speaking at a one day workshop organized for Health Record officers yesterday in Kaduna, said the e-health record would also reduce the waiting time for an appointment, saying the computerization of such records would help reduce medical error which includes wrong prescription.

Speaking with THISDAY in Umuahia, the chief marketing officer of Broadbased Communications, Mr. Chidi Ibisi, said that the fibre optic network would put Abia on the telecommunications super highway and revolutionalise the healthcare delivery system in the state.

Recent reports in the media reveal that Nigerians spend up to N78 billion annually on medical tourism overseas. Early indicators from an ongoing survey show that over 50 percent of respondents have either personally experienced or know of a case of negligence in the course of healthcare service provision in a Nigerian hospital.

Making the assertion last week in a lecture entitled; "E - Learning and Medical Practice"at the 9th Faculty Conference/Annual Gathering of the Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Idi- Araba Lagos, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, MTN, Dr. Bola Akingbade said Telemedicine would benefit both patient, healthcare systems and the society at large.