The My Health Record is not an ivory tower project but one that Australia must and is beginning to embrace as it reaches a tipping point in the next year or so, but the healthcare sector could also do with a “bonfire of the faxes” similar to that which has helped transform other industries, Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) CEO Tim Kelsey says.

In some of his first public remarks upon taking up the high-profile role, Mr Kelsey told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) in Brisbane recently that the modernisation of healthcare through the implementation of digital technology was now the single most important public policy agenda.