IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

IT companies are been urged to look at opportunities in the e-health market as Australia faces an aging population over the next 10 years.

KPMG Australia partner, Bernard Salt, told delegates at Gartner’s Infrastructure, Operations and Data Centre Summit that as the baby boomer generation retires and lives longer, the requirement for e-health will rise.

The Department of Health and Ageing has settled on the Federal Government’s single sign-on portal as the primary method of accessing consumer e-health records when they are made available later this year.

Consumers who opt for a personally controlled electronic health record from July 1 will be required to link their record to their login credentials on the australia.gov.au online portal in order to access the record online.

The proposal suggested by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission (NHHRC) would give Australians access to their health records online and medical professionals would need a patient's permission to access the data.

Having access to their own records is seen as vital to ensure consumer acceptance of the proposed e-health revolution and it would allow individuals to go online and update their records and add relevant information and doctors, specialists, pharmacists and other health professionals would all have to become "e-enabled" to access the data.

In terms of overall spending trend of the Australian healthcare industry, IT spending has a very minor share in the overall spending. As per our industry estimates, healthcare industry spent only 2% of its overall healthcare spending in 2009, which is very less in comparison to the international standards. Thus, the segment holds a lot of potential for future growth. Our report will help clients to better understand the market dynamics and get an insight of the current and the future outlook of the Australian healthcare IT industry.

Unveiling the plan, the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said that every minute detail of a person’s medical record will be combined together through electronic medium in a short form by the mid of the next year.

He further added that the e-health system will be accessible to both patients and physicians only after they enter they unique 16-digit identification number, which will be given to them very soon.

Typically, mental health patients visit a number of healthcare providers and it is possible for a patient to have a GP, psychologist and psychiatrist and also deal with other health professionals, pharmacists and even rehabilitation programs, who all need accurate and up to date information about the patient's care and medication.

The report, which was developed by consultancy Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu earlier this year but only partially published last week, was endorsed by state and federal health ministers last week as a key strategy document outlining how the nation's outdated and dysfunctional health IT systems should be brought up to date.

Journet’s role in Austrade demands that Australian education and training is marketed and promoted internationally and it certainly helps the agency’s case when “Australia has become a leader in e-learning content and educational technology systems”.

Like most countries, walking into a doctors surgery can be a laborious process, with medical records being re-told over and over again before diagnosis can get under way. However, the Federal government has looked to amend this process by putting medical records online through an electronic health record system.

According to a new report from consults Ovum, Australia's national level eHelath strategy development has slowed to a crawl.

Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton has announced an independent review of the project to see how it can be improved.

AMA national president Dr Steve Hambleton, one of the panel members for the review, says e-health records need to be made easier for doctors to use.

Global advisory and accounting firm Ernst and Young has blasted the Australian government’s efforts to digitise its services to the community and business as “poor”, warning that “the nation’s ability to gain competitive advantage through innovative use of digital technology will quickly be eroded” unless a lack of political and financial commitment is reversed.

A new report — Digital Australia: State of the Nation — released on Monday by the firm report paints a dismal picture of government digitisation efforts to date, highlighting new findings that say that “almost a third of citizens nominated the public sector as providing their worst digital experience, putting it at the bottom of our national rankings.”

Key points:

• Estonia was one of the first countries to declare internet access to be a human right
• 99 per cent of government services are available online 24/7
• 50 new AI applications are set to go online within the public sector by 2020

Walking through the fairy-tale streets of Estonia's capital Tallinn, it may seem hard to believe that this tiny nation is home to one of the most advanced e-governance systems in the world.

At the beginning of ‘The Great Debate’, the audience was polled. 68 per cent of delegates thought that Australia’s e-government is better, versus 32 per cent who supported Europe.

Peter Reichstadter, Head of Digital Austria at Federal Chancellery and Graham Bell, CIO of City of London formed Team Europe.

To say that the project has its doubters and critics would be an understatement. The Medical Software Industry of Australia (MSIA), the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Consumers e-health Alliance are among the many groups that spoke to the senate committee about their concerns regarding the implementation of the PCEHR. Their complaints are varied and range from privacy, to governance and liability, through to doubts about whether anyone would actually use the system.

The Government will redesign australia.gov.au to serve as the single site for Australians to seek out government services, with an anticipated relaunch for the first quarter of 2009.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and US offer advice on potential smart city vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them.

New guidance, Cybersecurity Best Practices for Smart Cities, wants to raise awareness among communities and organizations implementing smart city technologies that these beneficial technologies can also have potential vulnerabilities. A collaboration among the Five Eye nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US), it advises communities considering becoming smart cities to assess and mitigate the cybersecurity risks that comes with the technology.

A joint effort between the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand yielded recommendations to prevent cyber attacks on increasingly digital infrastructure.

As municipal infrastructure becomes increasingly integrated with technologies to improve the operations and efficiency of basic utilities—running water, power, and internet access—the governments of the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand launched updated cybersecurity protocols.

The concept of heavily connected, internet driven Smart Cities bristling with digital cameras and sensors might have been the dream of Big Tech firms like Google and Amazon looking to rewire urban infrastructure in their own image, but the Five Eyes intelligence community, including the Australian Signals Directorate, has just fired off a serious new warning about the major cyber risks technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT)  and 5G now pose.

In a major upgrade to advice previously directed at the deployment of 5G networks, the Five Eyes agencies are now telling everyone from major carriers to town mayors and wastewater operators to take a serious second look at the heavily-pumped notion of connecting everything from rubbish bins to traffic lights to the net.