Dr Tanya Kelly described Queensland as an “avid uploader” to the My Health Record when she gave an update on the state’s digital initiatives at the Digital Health Festival today. Dr Kelly who is A/Deputy Director-General Queensland Health – eHealth Queensland, gave a comprehensive overview to a packed audience.
On recent legislation she said: “What is changing with the sharing by default legislation is that if you have got My Health Record and you’ve got the My Health app, all of the pathology and all the radiology that every patient has will go onto that My Health app.
“And so when you’re in there with your GP and you get the form for the pathology and the form for your x-ray you, the consumer, are going to get the result in your my health app.
A game changer
“Now that is a game changer because you’re going to be the holder of the most amount of information about you and it will become important for all Australian consumers who choose to have it because it will have such valuable information.
“And so in Queensland Health we see this coming and we are making sure that we’re following the right processes in terms of privacy and options for consumers but as a general strategic view, we’re avid uploaders.
“We’re trying to upload as much as we can to give the consumers as much information as they can so it’s highly valuable when you’re moving through the various jurisdictions. When you’re moving as a consumer, you’re not just crossing over state jurisdictions where perhaps you go between New South Wales and Queensland – you’re crossing jurisdictions all the time in your care.
“When you’re going to a GP and then you go to an emergency department, then you go to a consumer provider, then you go to a private physiotherapist, the funders are in different jurisdictions throughout that whole journey and that impacts how information is shared,” she said.
Decision support
Dr Kelly outlined some of the work underway in Queensland around advanced clinician decision support. “We have early warning tools that have shown excellent results in being able to warn clinicians about pending deterioration.
“We have a new sepsis tool that we’re about to release and we’re building now AI into our clinician decision support tools,” she said.
Closing equity gap
“The satellite backup system, enterprise grade, seamless failover, has been a game changer for our rural and remote areas,” Dr Kelly said, highlighting the goal to close the equity gap through reliable digital infrastructure.
Partnerships have been instrumental. “We’ve worked closely with Telstra to target the sites with less resilience and redundancy in the network,” Dr Kelly said noting that identifying high-priority risk sites has led to “great results in terms of equity across Queensland.”
But she stressed the importance of strong digital foundations – more than just internet connections. Dr Kelly called asset management, often overlooked, as “a ticket to the real show.” She said: “If you’ve got your asset management sorted, you can start getting into things that are going to change the dial.”
Driving transformation
Queensland Health has embraced a risk-based asset pipeline process to allocate funding and drive digital transformation. “When you build your risk portfolios around a funding source, there is a great degree of incentive to complete the risk register,” Dr Kelly said.
From here, a strategic asset management plan allows the organisation to “give strategic advice to government” while identifying opportunities to “add value to the system” through digital platforms like the integrated Electronic Medical Record (iEMR).
With plans to complete the iEMR rollout across the western rural and remote corridor, the final pitch to Treasury is underway.
