The Australian Digital Health Agency today announced the upgrade of My Health Record, an online, electronic summary of one’s key health information, with enhanced clinical workflow capabilities, which will enable healthcare providers to more easily identify and group together relevant tests and results and provide the best possible healthcare. This includes the keeping track of tests, knowing when they were carried out and monitoring patients’ results over time.

According to ADHA, more than 31 million clinical documents and more than 1.3 billion Medicare documents have already been uploaded to MHR. The upgrade means that Pathology and Diagnostic Imaging Overviews are automatically available from Clinical Information System applications that implemented the My Health Record Document List.

Prior to this upgrade, CIS vendors had to do development work to implement the Pathology and DI Views. Now CIS applications that have implemented the MHR Document List will be able to provide the Pathology and DI Overviews without additional development work from the CIS vendors.

THE LARGER TREND 

Earlier this month, ADHA partnered with 42 organisations to ensure they are able to easily share information when using different secure messaging platforms across 56 separate software products. In June, statewide pathology providers in the Northern Territory and South Australia connected to MHR, giving patients and clinicians faster and direct access to pathology reports. 

ON THE RECORD

“Many of us have diagnostic tests ordered by different healthcare providers and undertaken at different locations over time. As a GP, it can be challenging to keep track of these reports with our patients and determine whether, where and when a particular test has been done, particularly when a patient is seeing a range of healthcare professionals to manage multiple conditions,” said Professor Meredith Makeham, Chief Medical Adviser, ADHA, in a statement.

“This upgrade to MHR enhances the way we can view diagnostic imaging and pathology reports to gain a quick snapshot of a patient’s test result history. The new overviews show you multiple reports within a specific date range on one page, and that improves the ability of healthcare providers to access important test result information that we need to inform clinical decisions,” she concluded.