Health to head to Parliament for MHR sharing law

Australia's Health Minister Mark Butler plans to introduce next month November a piece of legislation that will mandate the default sharing of medical images to My Health Record (MHR).

Earlier in May, Minister Butler floated this requirement, which was one of the recommendations of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce.

While there is progress in sharing pathology and diagnostic images – about a third of medical imaging reports are now being uploaded to MHR – this is "still too low and too slow."  

"The 'sharing by default' legislation will be introduced to Parliament next month… I'd like the laws to be passed and in place by the middle of next year," Minister Butler said in a recent press conference. 

"To show that we're serious, the laws will include consequences for companies that do not share," he added.

Citing an example, Minister Butler said Medicare payments to clinics might be withheld if they do not upload a patient's test result or scan. "It's as simple as that," he stressed.

CDIO wanted

The Australian Department of Health and Aged Care is on the lookout for a chief digital information officer.

In a LinkedIn job post, the department said the position will "shape and help drive a department-wide, end-to-end digital strategy," which includes the modernisation of the department's digital ecosystem. 

Moreover, the CDIO role will head IT projects in two ICT divisions and advise the department's executives on ICT strategy, ICT delivery and digital transformation.

Queensland Health digitises PRM and staff survey collection

Queensland Health will be implementing across hospitals and health services a digital platform for managing the collection and analysis of patient-reported measures (PRM) and staff surveys on patient safety culture.

It recently awarded New Zealand-based The Clinician a contract to deploy the off-the-shelf application Zedoc, which acts as a single system for near-real-time collecting and analysing PRMs and PSC data. 

This upcoming deployment follows recent implementations of the PRM platform across South Australia and Singapore.