(Introduction by Croakey)
Australia now has a National Digital Health Strategy, which proposes that by 2022, health information will be available whenever and wherever it is needed, and that its exchange will be secure.
The Strategy was endorsed by federal, state and territory health ministers meeting in Brisbane last Friday.
(See other items on their agenda here – including Indigenous health, Andrew Forrest and a global Eliminate Cancer Initiative, a national primary care training package regarding family violence, the Fifth National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan 2017-2022, and plans to provide support for people with severe mental resulting in psychosocial disability who are not eligible for the NDIS).
It speaks volumes that the National Digital Health Strategy says one of its goals is to end dependence on paper-based correspondence and the fax machine or post.
Faxes?!*&^
The Strategy follows consultations with more than 3,000 people, public meetings in more than 103 locations across Australia, and more than 1,000 formal submissions and survey responses (see them here).
The Australian Digital Health Agency, which has responsibility for co-ordinating implementation of the strategy, now plans to develop a Framework for Action, to be published later this year with implementation plans for the strategy.
Meanwhile, Dr Helen Bevan, Chief Transformation Officer with the NHS, is well known on Twitter (@helenbevan) and other social media for sharing interesting presentations about the challenges and opportunities involved in large-scale change efforts across health systems.
Below is a timely presentation to the Health Informatics Conference now underway in Brisbane (#HIC17) in which she suggests change agents in e-health (and no doubt other areas too) have much to learn from social movements.
These slides (also available here) are reproduced with Bevan’s permission.
Helen Bevan presents:
