Queensland to pilot telestroke service at Hervey Bay Hospital

The Queensland government has designated Hervey Bay Hospital as the pilot site for the upcoming statewide telestroke service.

Based on a media release, doctors and nurses at Hervey Bay Hospital are being prepared for the Queensland Telestroke Service pilot happening in the coming weeks. 

Queensland is the remaining Australian state to launch a telestroke service. Each year, it records around 5,000 new cases of stroke. The state government has committed A$5.8 million ($3.8 million) each year for this service. 

DOHAC to automate Monthly Care Statements

The Department of Health and Aged Care looks to automate the generation of monthly care statements. 

It recently reached out to both software vendors and residential aged care providers to partake in its pilot programme to test a software solution for automating monthly care statements. The care statements provide a snapshot of care and services that aged care residents access.

From October, residential aged care providers could start offering verbal or written monthly care statements voluntarily to their residents. 

The software pilot fulfils one of the reform recommendations of the Royal Commission in 2021. 

Home care visit verification platform leverages FHIR 

Health tech startup didgUgo is set to provide IT system interoperability to its partners who use its care visit verification solution. 

The company partnered with InterSystems to adopt the IRIS for Health platform to offer interoperability based on FHIR standards. The InterSystems integration also allows didgUgo to leverage AI for fraud prevention.

didgUgo offers a software-based check-in/check-out solution to health, aged care, and disability providers. By adopting IRIS for Health, it aims to allow its users who are also utilising the TrakCare EMR system to plug in its solution, enabling near real-time data exchange. 

NSW's Far West GPs get access to patient data

General practitioners and practices around NSW's Far West region can now have view-only access to patient-consented medical information via the state-developed clinical portal Healthenet. 

This is possible through the Co-located GP clinics project, which trial started in August. The project is being delivered by eHealth NSW, together with the Western NSW Primary Health Network (WNSW PHN), Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation and the South Eastern branch of the Royal Flying Doctors Service. 

The project, according to a press statement, aims to enable the sharing of patient information between public acute and primary care. This includes patient demographics, clinical summaries, test reports, prescribed medications, and allergies.