Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Thursday, July 03, 2008

NEHTA Exposes What it Is Up To – By Accident?

The following lit up the RSS Feed this afternoon.

http://www.nehta.gov.au/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=-1&Itemid=139

Privacy Blueprint released today!

The Privacy Blueprint for the Individual Electronic Health Record has been released for comment.

Excited – I went off to the site

What' New

This section only lists NEHTA's most recent publications.

To view all of NEHTA's publications, All Publications.

General

Privacy Blueprint for the Individual Electronic Health Record new!

Hits 5

Published 03/07/2008

Details & Feedback

Download

Now guess what! The document is also an explanation of the proposal for the IEHR as well as details of the Privacy Proposals.

Figures 2 and 3 of this document are invaluable in understanding just how NEHTA is thinking on the Shared EHR. This is vital stuff for discussion and review – and feedback to NEHTA!

At a quick scan it really looks to me as just the 2005 HealthConnect with an associated Personal Health Record. I wonder will the Council of Australian Government consider all this without vastly more input from all the interested stakeholders

Please go for it and review closely and comment! I will review and discuss the privacy content next week if I get a chance.

David.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why do you suggest it is - by accident?

Looks pretty routine to me and quite intended.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Hardly. There has been no disclosure on any specifics on the IEHR that I have seen for at least 18 months. I am happy to be sent any details anyone else has seen in the interim.

David.

Anonymous said...

Well, perhaps NEHTA has now published it now in order to receive feedback / comments. Isn't that what I can read on the home page ......

"The Privacy Blueprint for the Individual Electronic Health Record has been released for comment."

Anonymous said...

I rarely speak in favour of NEHTA but this whole IEHR proposal was openly discussed at a number of nation wide forums with a wide range of clinical and industry stakeholders all facilitated by the energetic Julie McCrosen.

Generally the forums support the concept of an IEHR but want it called something simple and catchy (mine decided on AUShealth), and probably to be a summary record in the first instance. They were tired of waiting for the holy grail.

While AHMACV supports a full opt in model (afraid of Australia Card Mk3?), most consumers and other forum participants support an opt out core summary record with opt in value added extras. Also most felt the initial target if it has to be opt in needs to be the groups who would see value in in opting in such as birthing mothers, children, chronic disease,the aged and ATSI population (per theNT trials).

NEHTA are still taliking about providers also being opt-in for registration for the PHI! the forums want all providers receiving government funding for services to be registered and given a PHI.

Anonymous said...

The following extracts from the NEHTA document (What is the national approach to IEHR?) clearly indicates that NEHTA, in collaboration with Government, is developing a PHR (Personal Health Record).

To avoid conflict with industry driven PHR initiatives they have masqueraded the project under some new terminology ie. IEHR -Individual Electronic Health Record.

“A national approach to IEHR offers a new way of managing healthcare information for all Australians, providing individual consumers with access to their own health information where, when and as they need it.

An IEHR contains selected portions of an individual’s health records, generated by their healthcare providers, including test results, prescriptions, hospital discharge summaries and letters from specialists, as well as key facts for an individual, such as current medications, allergies and alerts, problem history, procedure history, etc. These
records will be accessible only to authorised healthcare providers to whom the individual gives permission.

The IEHR will change the healthcare paradigm from organisation-based to individual-based records management. This means information about individuals’ healthcare and treatment is centred around and accessible to them, rather than only residing with a doctor, hospital or other healthcare institution.

People are then empowered to know more about their own healthcare. They have access to their health information, they can see who else has viewed their record and the data is stored in a secure, centrally managed repository accessible online to authorised users from anywhere in Australia.”

Anonymous said...

Exactly and doesn’t this send a really powerful signal to industry?

Government will do the job.

Don’t expect Government or NEHTA to provide support for PHR projects which have the potential to compete with the IEHR.

Perhaps it would be better named NPHR - Nehta Personal Health Record so that later it can be renamed National Personal Health Record.

Anonymous said...

The great tragedy in all this is that Government shouldn't be developing these kind of systems. It should be supporting industry to do so.

Anonymous said...

You sound disappointed that they're actually following your advice and letting people know what's planned.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

Na, just grumpy they have taken so long to make so little advance from where HealthConnect was 3 years ago - before it was defunded! All this privacy work was begun by Clayton Utz 5+ years ago - and should have been sorted long since. Also it would have been nice to see a bit more detail earlier than now on the non-privacy aspects of their proposal.

David.