The Australasian Institute of Digital Health has joined three other peak bodies in calling on the Australian government to expand telehealth provision to nurses, including practice nurses and those working in community and aged care.

Health Minister Greg Hunt announced yesterday that MBS telehealth items had been extended to GPs in vulnerable groups to allow them to provide telehealth consults from home, and that at the end of the week there would be a further extension to allow GPs and medical specialists to consult with all patients, whether they have a COVID-19 diagnosis or not.

Former Oneview Healthcare and Cerner staffer Steve Lutz has joined Alcidion as its general manager of business development for Australia and New Zealand.

Before heading up Oneview in the region, Mr Lutz spent 17 years with Cerner, including working with eHealth NSW on the statewide community health and outpatient care (CHOC) and electronic medications management (eMeds) programs.

Victorian health service Bellarine Community Health (BCH) has signed up with ASX-listed Global Health to roll out its MasterCare electronic medical record across all of BCH's programs and services.

Global Health will also roll out its new Dashboards as a Service (DaaS) offering and its Connectivity suite, which includes the company’s eSwitch platform for integration within the service and its ReferralNet secure messaging platform for the secure sharing of patient and clinical information across the region.

Data from medication adherence app developer MedAdvisor shows a significant surge in patients ordering medications via their online app, with over the counter medicines such as paracetamol and Ventolin being stockpiled along with common prescription medicines for cardiovascular disease, stomach ulcers and depression.

MedAdvisor is warning that there will be a dire medication shortage if hoarding continues, as orders surge more than 130 per cent compared to three weeks ago.

The Australian government has expanded the MBS telehealth items for the coronavirus to cover general practitioners and health professionals in at risk groups, such as those who are over 70 or have a chronic medical condition, from today.

According to AMA, the government will also announce a comprehensive telehealth model of care at the end of the week that will open telehealth consults to all patients, with or without Covid-19, from GPs and medical specialists. This will include mental health and allied health consultations.

The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners is telling GPs to conduct a virtual consultation by phone, email or video for all patients before seeing them in person to try to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

The call has been backed by the NZ Medical Association, which said it would help to minimise the risk to the most vulnerable patients as well as frontline healthcare workers.

RNZCGP president Samantha Murton said patients requiring in person GP appointments will still get them, but non-urgent, routine appointments will be done by other means if possible.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending March 22: UK clinicians can use WhatsApp, Ontario goes virtual first, Microsoft Teams for NHS, cyber-attack on Czech coronavirus hospital, cyber-attack on US health dept, mobile malware, US relaxes privacy rules, US relaxes telehealth restrictions, electronic GP referrals to pharmacy

Clinicians told they can use WhatsApp to share data in face of Covid-19
Digital Health News ~ Andrea Downey ~ 19/03/2020

Clinicians have been told they can use messaging services like WhatsApp “where the benefits outweigh the risk” to share information about coronavirus, new NHSX guidance says.

Ontario shifting to virtual-first model in bid to halt spread of COVID-19
The Star ~ Megan Ogilvie ~ 16/03/2020

Starting this week, most doctors will talk to patients on the phone, by video conference or through email as a first-step to determine who needs to come to the office for an in-person appointment.

Despite the release last Friday by Australia's Department of Health of new item numbers for telehealth, lobbying continued this week by a number of doctors' groups as well as the Consumers Health Forum to allow any patient consultation to be handled by telehealth if clinically appropriate.

There was a slight relaxation of the rules this week to remove the term “usual GP” from the requirements, allowing a doctor from the same practice to see a patient remotely if their usual doctor isn't available. Midwives and obstetricians have also been given item numbers to use telehealth to monitor women remotely, but there is still a great deal of confusion out there.

eRx Script Exchange has signed up some of Australia's leading pharmacy groups to roll out its new MedView Flow platform, which will allow pharmacists to queue their workflow in one window, including electronic prescriptions when they become available.

MedView Flow will provide a single window on electronic prescriptions as well as scanned paper scripts, active script lists, online orders and those made through consumer-facing apps.

The board of pathology, imaging and medical centre operator Healius has rejected a proposal by a subsidiary of private equity firm Partners Group to buy the whole company for $2.1 billion, saying the bid does not reflect the value of the company.

Healius said it is still open to negotiations with Partners for a higher offer, and that it is also still in the process of seeking offers for a buyer for its medical centre business.

Online appointment booking services are rolling out a number of pre-appointment screening services and telehealth functionality to assist medical and allied health practices deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

MBS-funded telehealth services have been expanded in the last few days to allow midwives and certain specialists to also claim for telehealth services, along with GPs, nurse practitioners and some allied health practitioners providing mental health services.

The My Health Record system underwent an upgrade over the weekend to make improvements to the advance care planning section, with clinicians now able to upload goals of care documents.

Changes have also been made to the medicines view section, which system operator the Australian Digital Health Agency says will improve the way a person’s medicines list appears in the record.

Rostering solution Core Schedule has introduced a new feature that allows staff to be tagged as “not available – in isolation” so managers can see who is able to work during the coronavirus pandemic.

Core Schedule is a hospital staff rostering program developed for NZ emergency departments that is also widely used in Australian hospitals and in the US.

The new feature has been added following the case of North Shore Hospital in Auckland, where more than 50 staff were put into a 14-day isolation period after being exposed to a patient with coronavirus.

The New Zealand government has allocated $50 million in support for GPs and primary care as well as $20m to improve video conferencing and telehealth consultations as part of its dedicated $500m package to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

It has also allocated an extra $20 million to the Healthline national advice line, which is currently handling thousands of calls a day and has put on extra doctors and nurses to provide clinical over the phone.

ACT Health has gone live with a new patient journey and online bed management system using Alcidion's Miya Precision platform at Canberra Hospital and University of Canberra Hospital.

The implementation covers more than 600 beds and features graphical dashboards based on smart technology to support proactive management of the patient journey. The coordinated online bed management capability will contribute to patient flow and align allocations.

ASX-listed Global Health has added an announcement bar to its HotHealth patient engagement platform to enable users to add notifications about the COVID-19 pandemic to their website.

The company is also offering the HotHealth platform for free until June 15 to all new and current users.

The Australian GP Alliance (AGPA) and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) have joined other doctors' groups in calling for an extension to the rules covering the new MBS telehealth item numbers during the coronavirus pandemic.

AGPA director Mukesh Haikerwal said today that the limitation on the ability to consult remotely to doctors who have held a face-to-face consultation with the patient in the last 12 months was too restrictive, describing it as “unhelpful”.

The Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) is postponing its annual Health Informatics Conference (HIC) and Australian Telehealth Conference (ATC) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

HIC and ATC will now be held in Brisbane in October, along with the Health Data Analytics 2020 conference.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending March 15: NHS GPs encouraged to triage appointments by telehealth, US data sharing rules, flu vaccine sharing, daft digital health definition, opt-out organ donation, Epic v Cerner on interoperability rules, NHS-approved messaging app, WeDoctor float, online triage, autonomous monitoring at Texas hospitals

GPs urged to go digital to prevent spread of coronavirus
Digital Health News ~ Andrea Downey ~ 10/03/2020

To mitigate any risk that potentially infected patients book appointments online and attend the practice when they should be receiving advice to self-isolate or go through testing, all practices are now being advised to change face-to-face appointments booked online to triage appointments via telephone or video.

HHS releases final data sharing rules
Information Security Media Group ~ Marianne Kolbasuk McGee ~ 09/03/2020

The rule is "unprecedented" in providing patients with "safe and secure" access to their health information using their smartphones, said ONC leader Don Rucker, M.D.

As the Australian government ups the national response to the coronavirus outbreak by banning non-essential gatherings of more than 500 people from Monday, the federal Department of Health on Friday released a package of welcome measures to try to help manage the coronavirus outbreak and the massive pressure it is destined to place on our healthcare system.

The department has made available 30-odd new MBS items that will allow GPs, specialists, nurse practitioners, psychologists and occupational therapists to treat patients remotely, either by video or telephone. The items cover not just those diagnosed with COVID-19 or requested to quarantine themselves, but vulnerable groups like the elderly and those with chronic illnesses.

The Department of Health has this morning released the new MBS item numbers that can be used by GPs, specialists, psychologists and nurse practitioners using telehealth services to treat patients at risk of COVID-19.

The items cover patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 virus but are not in hospital or patients who have been required to isolate themselves in quarantine.

Western Australians who return negative test results for COVID-19 will now be informed via SMS notification to reduce administrative time spent on return phone calls.

Health Minister Roger Cook said more than 700 COVID-19 tests are being conducted every day in the state but that number is expected to rise.

"It can take clinicians up to 20 minutes per phone call to inform patients of a negative test result,” Mr Cook said.

General practice representatives have called for an extension of the new telehealth MBS items to the general population in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and a potential financial crisis for the primary care sector.

The telehealth items announced this week will only apply to people quarantining themselves at home with COVID-19 or a suspected case, as well as certain vulnerable groups such as the elderly.

President of the GP Deputising Association (GPDA) Nathan Pinskier says the telehealth items announced were inadequate and needed to be extended to the general population for routine care.

Update: Following the cancellation of the huge HIMSS conference that was due to be held in Florida this week, other healthcare conferences closer to home are also feeling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Health Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ) has cancelled its Innovations in Digital Health (IiDH 2020) conference in May. Formerly known as the Emerging Tech in Health conference, it was due to be held in Wellington from May 6-7. HiNZ says all registered delegates will receive a full refund.

The Department of Health plans a “development sprint” with medical and pharmacy software vendors over the next eight weeks to fast-track the roll-out of electronic prescribing capability as the coronavirus outbreak is declared a pandemic.

Under the coronavirus national health plan, the department says ePrescribing and dispensing implementation will be fast tracked for up to 80 per cent of general practices and community pharmacies over the next eight weeks.

Patient engagement platform HotDoc has released new functionality that allows practices to screen patients for COVID-19 symptoms and to book a telehealth appointment, following the announcement that an MBS item will be made available to GPs, nurses and mental health practitioners from Friday to consult with patients at home by phone or video.

And online appointment booking service HealthEngine also plans to release new functionality by the end of the week, including a telehealth solution at no or low cost for practices for use with or without the MBS rebate and a triage survey allowing patients to self-assess for COVID-19 symptoms.

Telehealth experts are recommending that healthcare organisations use standards-based telehealth platforms rather than consumer-grade apps like Skype or Facetime when remotely consulting with patients during the coronavirus outbreak.

The Australasian Telehealth Society (ATHS) says Skype and Facetime are not secure platforms and they needed to be used advisedly.

The call comes as the federal government confirms a new MBS item number will be made available on Friday to GPs, specialists, nurses and mental health practitioners for bulk-billed consultations with affected patients by phone or video.

The federal government is promising to fast-track the roll out of electronic prescribing in the face of the coronavirus outbreak as part of a package of services to ensure medications get to patients quickly.

The government said today it will provide $25 million to fund home medicines services to enable patients to have their PBS prescriptions filled online or remotely, and have the medicines delivered to their home.

Auckland-headquartered health IT vendor Orion Health has developed a virtual care pandemic outbreak monitoring platform to be released this week at no cost to customers in what it believes is a world first.

The virtual care solution will allow patients and healthcare workers who have been exposed to the coronavirus and are quarantined at home to download an app to their mobile device or access through their browser through which they can communicate with their healthcare provider and have their condition monitored.

The federal government will introduce new MBS items on Friday that will allow doctors, nurses and mental health practitioners to provide telehealth services to people isolated at home due to the coronavirus.

In a welcome move, they will also apply to people aged over 70, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged over 50, people with chronic health conditions or who have compromised immune systems, parents with new babies and pregnant women.

The federal government will announce details of a proposed time-limited expansion of telehealth MBS items “very soon” as it develops new strategies to manage the coronavirus outbreak.

An expansion of the COVID-19 national hotline to a round the clock service is also on the cards, with general practices to be provided with a triage protocol that is the same as the national call centre.

IT services not-for-profit Patients First has sold its IT development arm Conporto Health and is stepping back from commercial activities after receiving funding from the Ministry of Health that will allow it to concentrate on managing the GP2GP service.

First set up by the ministry in association with shareholders the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and General Practice NZ, Patients First worked with practice management system vendors and secure messaging service HealthLink to develop GP2GP, which enables medical records to be electronically transferred from one GP to another.

General practices using the Best Practice Premier practice management system can now screen patients for COVID-19 before they arrive at the clinic using its in-built BetterConsult technology.

BetterConsult is a digital clinical questionnaire that patients fill out prior to arriving at the practice and allows clinical staff to review each patient's symptoms ahead of time.

Pharmacy chain Amcal has released a new app that allows patients to fulfil their prescriptions digitally and access their prescription history, which is updated each time they fill a script.

Built for Amcal by MedAdvisor, the app also features an in-built carers' mode that allows carers to keep multiple profiles in the one place.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending March 8: HIMSS conference falls to coronavirus, US to release funds for coronavirus telehealth, Babylon providing digital platform for Rwanda, SweynTooth threat to medical devices, AI for premature baby retinopathy, online mental health for Ontario, digital front door for NHS, consumers don't know what digital health is, Alexa taps First Databank for answers, VA EHR delay

HIMSS cancels over coronavirus concerns
MedCity News ~ Elise Reuter ~ 05/03/2020

HIMSS cancelled its annual conference for the first time in more than 50 years.

Telehealth coverage included in coronavirus spending bill
mHealth Intelligence ~ Eric Wicklund ~ 04/03/2020

Congressional leaders have agreed to a coronavirus response bill that will allow Medicare reimbursement for care providers using telehealth to treat seniors at home.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to escalate amid personal protective equipment shortages and indecorous scuffles over rolls of dunny paper, we find ourselves asking a simple question. If now is not the time for the Australian government to finally drop its intransigence and introduce an MBS item number for GP telehealth, then when is?

Doctors' groups have been calling for the capability for years, particularly for housebound patients and those in residential aged care, but so far GPs have only been allowed to claim for remote consultations under very limited circumstances. This week, Australia's chief medical officer Brendan Murphy finally admitted that the government had listened and was considering the option, telling a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday that it was also considering the possibility of allowing video consults with elderly patients and those with chronic diseases who would prefer not to venture out at the moment.

Blacktown Hospital in Sydney has set up a portal within its electronic medical record that allows prescriptions for discharge medications to be sent electronically to the hospital pharmacy, meaning a paper script no longer has to be physically signed and delivered.

The new workflow is part of Blacktown's electronic medications management (eMeds) program, which has seen Cerner's medications system rolled out across the Western Sydney Local Health District's hospitals, along with most other LHDs in the state.

Sydney-based nurse call and critical messaging technology developer Vitalcare has released a new nurse call system that supports wired and wireless connections along with hybrid platforms and devices.

Vitalcare has also recently formed a partnership with biomedical engineering researchers from the University of NSW to apply low power radar, artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to dementia support systems in aged care nurse call systems.

The Aged Care Industry IT Council (ACIITC) has joined a research partnership aimed at resolving some of the aged and community care sector’s most critical issues through the greater use of digital technologies.

ACIITC will join provider not-for-profit representative group Aged & Community Services Australia; the Aged Care Guild, which represents the larger private aged care providers; and the Digital Health Co-operative Research Centre in the collaboration.

Telehealth and telephone triage services will be deployed in the event of a large outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) amid plans to direct the majority of people with mild symptoms to respiratory clinics and away from hospital EDs, Australia's chief medical officer says.

Planning is also underway to make testing for the virus available through private pathology practices, with public health laboratories having tested well over 10,000 Australians so far, the vast majority of them negative.

Sydney Local Health District has launched a trial of 24/7 virtual care for patients in the community from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA), dubbed rpavirtual.

The trial is using the CarePro Connected Care enterprise mobile platform from US-headquartered firm The Diary Corporation, delivered by its Australian partner ENTAG.

When we talk about innovations in achieving interoperability, we don’t usually think of healthcare data standards. But I’m going to change your mind, I think. Hopefully I’ll also convince you to start working now with the new FHIR standard and seriously consider how to integrate it with your existing healthcare information systems.

FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, which is the newest clinical data standard from the Health Level Seven International (HL7) standards organisation, is in itself an innovation. Using the same technology as the internet, it enables innovation for people using healthcare data.

Patient education specialist Healthily and population health software vendor Pen CS are about to launch their next generation SMS reminder technology GoShare Plus, which is being aimed at primary care preventative health campaigns and QI activities such as increasing vaccination rates, cancer screening and health assessment reminders.

GoShare Plus combines Pen's Clinical Audit Tool (CAT4) health analytics capability and GoShare's content library and 'content bundle' delivery method to enable general practices to send credible and engaging health information to patients based on selected criteria.

The tool is currently being used in several pilots, including one that will recruit 50 practices to use GoShare Plus to increase participation in shingles vaccinations.

The federal Department of Health is working with practice management software vendors to integrate the National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR) into their systems, providing direct access to patient screening histories for the cervical and bowel cancer screening programs.

The department is also developing a healthcare provider portal that will enable healthcare providers to use the NCSR for the submission of results, to access patients’ screening histories, and manage participant details and status on behalf of their patients.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending March 1: Babylon versus Twitter critic, Apple and J&J's heart health trial, AI for lung cancer detection, data privacy and Google's Fitbit acquisition, accredited AI standard for healthcare, phishing sophistication, US EHR standardisation plans to reduce burnout, Germany's EPR roll out, Epic CEO's privacy argument

Chatbot Babylon fires back at Twitter critic by publicly analyzing his search data
MobiHealthNews ~ Laura Lovett ~ 25/02/2020

For years, a Twitter user under the handle of @DrMurphy11 has posted his encounters with Babylon's tool based on hypothetical situations. On the whole his tweets have been critical of the chatbot and highlight inaccuracies and issues among its responses.

Apple, J&J open enrolment of Heartline Study to Medicare seniors with iPhones
MobiHealthNews ~ Dave Muoio ~ 25/02/2020

The study will use the smartphones, Apple Watches and a custom health engagement program to influence stroke risk and atrial fibrillation detection.

This week kicked off with the official go-live of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health and ended with a bit of controversy over SA Health's policy on sharing diagnostic reports and discharge summaries with the My Health Record for people under the age of 18. We congratulate our old HISA and ACHI friends on the successful rebranding to the new AIDH in what looks like a very smooth transition.

Another big story this week was the launch of a new index on the Australian stock exchange that covers the highest performing technology stocks, including six from the healthcare sector. The idea of the index is to draw attention to emerging companies and to widen interest in technology stocks beyond just information technology.

GPs have criticised an SA Health policy directive that bars personnel from uploading clinical documents such as pathology reports or discharge summaries to the My Health Record for children and young people under the age of 18.

SA Health has been uploading discharge summaries to the system since 2013, with pathology and diagnostic imaging reports being uploaded from May last year.

However, this is restricted to patients over the age of 18, with an SA Health directive stating that “where a patient is under the age of 18, no documents will be uploaded by SA Health personnel to the MHR system” and alluding to the potential to cause harm.

Six healthcare technology companies have been included in the Australian Securities Exchange's new All Technology Index, which has been designed in association with S&P Dow Jones Indices to follow the performance of the region's expanding technology industry.

The All Tech Index, which launched on Monday, has been designed to be a broader index than the existing S&P/ASX 200 Information Technology Index by including companies in other innovative technology-related sub-industries such as consumer electronics, internet and direct marketing retail and healthcare technology.

Pathology, imaging and medical centre operator Healius has confirmed it is exploring the sale of its general practice business, having invested in a new contract model for its 1155 GPs and in revamping its practice IT systems since it rebranded from Primary Health Care.

The ASX-listed company revealed yesterday that it had received an offer from a subsidiary of Swiss private equity firm Partners Group to acquire the whole company for $2.1 billion, which its board is now assessing. Partners yesterday bought a 15.88 per cent share in the company.

Online appointment booking service HealthEngine has integrated with Centaur Software's Dental4Windows practice management system as it actively targets the dental sector for growth.

Dental4Windows users previously used a manual process to add select appointment times but patients will now have full access to the practice's appointment schedule directly through HealthEngine.

Auckland-headquartered healthcare technology companies HealthLink and Konnect NET have finalised their merger, with Konnect NET staff moving into HealthLink's premises and the combined Clanwilliam Health launching a new website.

The two companies merged to form Clanwilliam Health last December but will retain their individual branding and are promising no change to products or support. HealthLink is the region's market-leading secure messaging vendor and Konnect NET is a health insurance claims integrator

SA Health has gone to market for a new digital telehealth network (DTN) service across its multiple sites to replace the existing Cisco TelePresence Content Server (TCS) software and hardware solution, which is at the end of its life.

The contract is currently delivered and maintained by Telstra with the infrastructure owned by SA Health. That contract ends on June 30, so SA Health has subsequently extended it for a year while the new solution is sourced and implemented.

Canberra headquartered software and services company Citadel Group has raised $127 million to fund the purchase of UK radiology and maternity software vendor Wellbeing Software, planning to use the acquisition to cross-sell its pathology and oncology platforms in the UK market and bring Wellbeing's offerings to Australia.

Citadel's health software portfolio currently includes the Auslab pathology software used by Queensland Health, Melbourne Health and Austin Health, along with the Charm oncology platform it bought in 2017 and the Anaesthetic Private Practice (APP) anaesthetist billing and practice management solution it bought in 2018.

Practice management software vendor Zedmed has released version 31 of its clinical and practice management system, featuring two-way SMS functionality, real-time MIMS updates and full integration for the SafeScript real-time prescription monitoring system for Victorian users.

The two-way SMS capability will allow patients to directly reply to appointment reminder message and Intramail and SMS messages can be managed in a new notifications panel in the Office screen. Recalls will now be sent as SMS messages rather than hard copy letters.

The Australasian Institute of Digital Health (AIDH) is now open for business following the merger between the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI) last year.

The new institute has over 1500 members, all of whom will be acknowledged as foundational members, along with any individuals and organisations who join before April 30.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending February 23: US information blocking debate, Netherlands to open data to patients, GE cyberscanner, UK considering database of specialist doctors, remote monitoring for coronavirus-exposed patients, Amazon launches virtual health platform for staff, telehealth roadmap for Canada, digital pharmacy service for Wales

How to read between the lines of the healthcare data blocking debate
Health Data Management ~ Niko Skievaski ~ 14/02/2020

Epic foreshadowed a situation like the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, where consumers unknowingly authorized their data to be used for purposes they may not have otherwise authorized.

This week, we checked in with South Australia to see how it was faring with the roll out of the state's electronic medical record in its largest hospital, the architectural marvel that is the new Royal Adelaide. We hadn't heard much from SA since the independent review into the much maligned EPAS system recommended early last year that the roll-out be paused while the system was optimised, so we thought we'd check on progress.

What we found was newly appointed chief medical information officer Santosh Verghese, who gave us an update on how he was overseeing the change in the roll-out schedule following the recommendation that EPAS be split into an EMR separate from the PAS. He also told us about the change in focus he was taking, moving from IT projects led by SA Health to projects led by clinicians.

Royal Adelaide Hospital has completed stage three of its four-stage implementation of Allscripts' Sunrise electronic medical record, rolling out clinical documentation throughout the hospital before embarking on the final stage, electronic medications management.

The roll-out follows an implementation at Mt Gambier District Health Service in November, the first trial of a new implementation strategy for what was formerly known as the Electronic Patient Administration System (EPAS).

Queensland Health has signed a contract with pharmacy software vendor Fred IT to build a new real-time prescription monitoring system for the state dubbed QScript, which is due to be rolled out in the second half of the year.

South Australia has also recently gone to tender for a new system, with the winning bidder expected to be announced at the end of this month.

Queensland passed amendments to its poisons and medicines law in September 2019 allowing the introduction of RTPM. According to HWL Ebsworth partner Katharine Philp, the law states that a failure by a prescriber or dispenser to check the database before prescribing or dispensing a monitored medicine will be an offence with a maximum penalty of 20 penalty units, or $2669.

The New Zealand government has allocated $1.4 million for a business case to rebuild its National Immunisation Register (NIR), part of a $23 million package aimed at strengthening the country's immunisation system.

Hundreds of thousands of young adults will be offered measles vaccinations in the new campaign, with District Health Boards asked to plan and deliver innovative and localised ways to get young adults immunised.

A large study into the use of activity monitors and wearables such as Fitbits in patients recovering from strokes, brain injuries, falls and fractures has found that the digital devices improve mobility, particularly time spent walking.

The Australian study also found that participants thoroughly enjoyed using the devices, with Fitbits the most commonly used, with others such as Xbox, Wii and iPads allowing exercises to be more interactive and enabling remote connection with a physiotherapist.

ASX-listed digital health firm ResApp Health has received the go-ahead for a trial of its smartphone app to screen for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at the Geraldton Regional Aboriginal Medical Service in Western Australia.

The study will recruit up to 200 subjects over a six-month period who will undergo a full clinical and spirometric assessment. Results from ResApp’s COPD screening app will be compared to the final clinical diagnosis.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is on the market for a digital health record and case management solution that can also streamline claims for time off work and incapacity payments.

The move follows a recommendation from the Australian National Audit Office that the force improve its delivery of organisational health services and a 2018 report by the Phoenix Australia Centre for Post-traumatic Mental Health.

The Victorian Agency for Health Information (VAHI) has contracted market research firm IPSOS to trial the collection of patient-reported outcomes data for cancer care.

The trial involves a patient survey using the EQ-5D survey tool that is widely used in population health and measures the patient's views on mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression.

The people behind the mCareWatch wearable device have launched a new personal emergency alarm aimed at keeping vulnerable people safe, offering real-time location visibility for families and carers.

mCare Digital says its new mCareMate personal alarm overcomes some of the practical problems encountered by people who use traditional personal alarms, promising ease of use out of the box.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending February 16: Data errors and duplicate records, ransomware costs mount, patient trust in data use, $100m telehealth pilot in US, EU medical device regulations, US VA delays Cerner go-live, consumer wearables more accurate than research, AI for ECGs, small hospital EMRs

Poor data quality, weak algorithms lead to patient matching issues
Health IT Analytics ~ Jessica Kent ~ 13/02/2020

The results showed that 66 percent of respondents believe that data entry errors contribute significantly to duplicate records at their organizations.

Cybersecurity was back in the news this week with the release of a couple of reports detailing the extent and cost of malicious cyber activity over the last year for healthcare and other industries. Security software firm Malwarebytes released its 2020 State of Malware Report this week, reporting that the healthcare sector was the fifth most popular industry for attack in 2019.

The report pointed to an increase in attacks on businesses over consumers, and to increased sophistication in attacks, with large organisations becoming bigger targets in an exercise known as big game hunting. The attacks are also increasingly likely to be launched on several fronts, with Trojans used to get into systems to deliver ransomware as the payload.

Ransomware is increasingly being targeted at large organisations with critical assets, and variants such as Ryuk that affected several hospitals in Victoria last year are thought to be the costliest out there, according to Malwarebytes Labs' 2020 State of Malware Report.

The release of the report comes as New Zealand-headquartered anti-malware firm Emsisoft calculates the total cost of ransom demands globally last year at a minimum of $6 billion, with Australia suffering losses of almost $40 million and New Zealand $6.5m.

Melbourne's Austin Health has issued a request for information for a new radiology information system (RIS) that offers workflow capabilities designed to improve patient experience, reduce clinical risk and improve hospital efficiency.

The system will be required to integrate with Austin's Cerner electronic medical record, TrakCare patient administration system, PowerHealth Solutions' PBRC billing system, Agfa picture archiving and communication system, HealthLink secure messaging and the My Health Record.

Clinical and practice management software vendor Best Practice has partnered with 3DAnatomica to provide access to 3DA's new suite of interactive tools and animations.

The new 3DA Clinic suite is aimed at improving health literacy and patient engagement by allowing GPs and practice nurses to explain complex health concepts during patient consults, with the ability to demonstrate body and organ functions in 3D and with 360º manipulative media.

The Victorian Cancer Agency (VCA) is funding a trial of patient narrative SMS messaging in five general practices in western Victoria to test whether it can improve rates of bowel cancer screening.

The trial will use Healthily's GoShare platform to send an SMS containing testimonial videos endorsing the benefits of cancer screening to people over 50 who have been sent the bowel cancer test kit.

Canterbury District Health Board has gone live with an automated system from Strata Health that directs referrals for home-based nursing care and community support automatically to the most appropriate provider.

Strata Health has deployed its Prism patient flow and resource matching technology, which is integrated with the South Island's electronic request management system (ERMS) and with HealthPathways, to allow GPs to make a referral from within their practice management system.

InterSystems is releasing global functionality for its TrakCare unified healthcare information system to screen and support patients with the novel coronavirus infection.

The functionality enables clinicians to screen patients for 2019-nCoV using World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance, and includes a link to the Wuhan Coronavirus Global Cases tracking app provided by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering in the US.

British researchers have sounded a warning about the accuracy of algorithm-based smartphone apps in assessing the risk of skin cancer, with a systematic review finding poor and variable performance that indicates these apps have not yet shown sufficient promise to recommend their use.

The study, published yesterday in the British Medical Journal, looked at six apps, one of which is available for use in Australia and New Zealand and has links to local research institutes and clinics, and which claims high accuracy in detecting the most common forms of skin cancer.

Few recipients of Commonwealth-funded home care packages (HCP) use online resources such as the My Aged Care portal or the internet in general to find and compare information about their package, and less than a quarter were using the My Aged Care Contact Centre to find information, a new survey has found.

The report, prepared by the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) from research undertaken with the University of South Australia (UniSA), agrees with the interim report of the aged care Royal Commission that the My Aged Care website is not delivering on the original aims of the Productivity Commission.

Cloud-based medical practice management system vendor Clinic to Cloud has launched a new automated claims handling tool that it says will make Medicare and private health insurance claiming easier.

The new Auto Claiming tool does away with batch claiming and instead uses a continuous and systematic workflow that submits claims as the practice bills, with data quality checks before and during the submission process.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending February 9: More US doctors going digital, NHS to reduce outpatient visits through telehealth,Dr Google, data mining v coal mining, EU start-up market, HIE app in Abu Dhabi, Nuance's AI marketplace for imaging, 5G enabled hospital, don't call Siri in an emergency, maternity record portal, Indian Health Service EMR, fake coronavirus messages spreading Emotet

Technology is changing the way doctors practice from televisits to remote monitoring, AMA survey finds
FierceHealthcare ~ Joanne Finnegan ~ 06/02/2020

Significantly more physicians are using emerging health technology in their clinical practice than they were just three years ago, according to a new American Medical Association (AMA) survey.

UCLPartners launches how-to guide for setting up virtual NHS clinics
Digital Health News ~ Owen Hughes ~ 05/02/2020

The NHS aims to avoid up to a third of face-to-face outpatient visits over five years, removing the need for up to 30 million outpatient appointments each year.

The big news this week was the announcement by the Australian Digital Health Agency that Melbourne Pathology had started uploading pathology reports to the My Health Record. Melbourne Pathology is one of Sonic Healthcare's subsidiaries and this marks another step forward in making valuable clinical information available to patients.

Melbourne Pathology is following in the footsteps of another Sonic subsidiary in Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology, which connected to the system last year. And with one of the big three private pathology providers now routinely uploading reports and the majority of state pathology services also doing so, there might actually be a reason for people to take a look at their record. The other big providers, Healius and Australian Clinical Labs, are still to get on board.

The Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) has released a draft digital health capability framework for nurses and midwives to support them in emerging digital workplaces.

The draft framework is open for consultation, with HISA expecting to finalise the framework in June with a view to releasing it officially at the International Nursing Informatics Congress in Brisbane in August.

Philips Electronics and Soliton IT have been named as the successful vendors to roll out a new imaging informatics solution for Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service in a $1.175 million contract.

Philips will implement the Carestream cloud-enabled enterprise imaging platform that it bought from Carestream last year, while Soliton will roll out its radiology information system (RIS).

Canterbury District Health Board has issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a digital faxing solution to replace analogue fax lines for in and outbound correspondence.

The move follows a directive from the Ministry of Health to phase out analogue faxes by the end of 2020 in all areas of the health system.

The Australian government has expanded its subsidy of the FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system, which uses a sensor worn on the back of the arm that connects to a reader or mobile phone app.

The $300 million continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) initiative was first rolled out in April 2017 for children and young people aged under 21 with type 1 diabetes.

Philips Healthcare has won a contract worth $7.5 million over four and a half years to roll out a statewide system for patient reported experience measures (PREMs) and patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) in Queensland.

Queensland Health went to market last year for the system with a request for a cloud-based solution that can collect and report PREMs and PROMs in real time.

Victoria's Central Hume Partnership (CHP) is rolling out DXC Care Suite with DXC Lorenzo patient administration system to replace the unconnected systems currently in use in the region's seven hospitals.

The cloud-based solution has been built on DXC's Healthcare Cloud based on Microsoft Azure and consists of a health platform and patient administration system that includes patient record management, automated scheduling and pathway management.

EpiSoft has rolled out its rebranded pre-admissions portal epi-me at Bethesda Health Care in WA, and in a first for the product has integrated with Global Health's MasterCare patient administration system.

Bethesda will also be the first hospital to use epi-me’s new post-discharge feedback module. epi-me, formerly known as eAdmissions, is now live in 73 sites around the country.

Victorian pathology provider Melbourne Pathology has begun uploading pathology reports to the My Health Record system, using the process established by fellow Sonic Healthcare subsidiary Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology last year.

GPs using practice management systems capable of electronic requesting can order a test and the full report will be lodged in the patient's My Health Record and viewable by the patient after seven days.

Ambulance Victoria will soon begin trialling the use of artificial intelligence technology that can listen in on triple zero calls to help call operators identify signs of cardiac arrest over the phone.

The Artificial Intelligence in Cardiac Arrest project is being funded by the Victorian government to the tune of $1.36 million, with the technology being developed in association with Monash University.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has repeated its long-standing call for new MBS rebates for GP telehealth consultations for patients in residential aged care facilities.

It also wants new rebates for consultations provided by a patient's usual GP for after-hours services, patients with a GP management plan and patients with mobility problems, along with extending the remote telehealth items beyond Monash regions 6 and 7 to other regional areas.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending February 2: PMS vendor fined $145m for opioid kickbacks, Epic against info blocking rule, Apple's health hype, AI in imaging, operating room interoperability, NHS's £140m AI fund, EMR systems “balkanised”, Walmart Health, 3D printed orthodontics, medical device vulnerabilities

Practice Fusion to pay $145M settlement for taking kickbacks aimed at increasing opioid prescriptions
FierceHealthcare ~ Heather Landi ~ 27/01/2020

Web-based electronic health record company Practice Fusion will pay $145 million to resolve criminal and civil charges it engaged in a kickback scheme aimed at increasing opioid prescriptions.

Epic continues campaign for changes to forthcoming ONC info blocking rules
Healthcare IT News ~ Mike Miliard ~ 29/01/2020

The company has been lobbying hospital leaders to oppose them and has said it might sue HHS, depending on the final rules' data provisions.

As the local health IT industry gears up for next week's HL7 International working group meeting in Sydney, the big news this week has come from the US, where the full details of the massive $US145 million fine levied against practice management system vendor Practice Fusion were revealed.

Practice Fusion, which first developed a PMS in 2008 and spruiked it to small, independent family doctor practices from its headquarters in San Francisco, gained substantial market share when it decided to offer the system for free. It quickly gathered investors and was a successful company, earning its revenue from advertising sales, predominantly from pharmaceutical companies. Practices were able to get an ad-free version by paying $100 a month, but few did.

Microsoft has pledged $US40 million over five years to a new AI for Health initiative, part of its $165m AI for Good program.

The program aims to empower researchers, non-profits and organisations with advanced technologies to help unlock solutions to the biggest challenges facing the world, including reducing health inequity and improving access to care for underserved populations.

Calvary Hospital Group has opened its new $345 million, 344-bed private hospital in Adelaide, replacing Calvary's Wakefield Hospital, which had been in existence since 1883.

Calvary is using Vitro Software's digital medical record, integrated with other hospital systems such as DXC Technology's iPM patient administration system and MedChart electronic medications management system.

The WA government has issued a tender for the $53.7 million redevelopment of Newman Health Service in the Pilbara, promising a significant upgrade to clinical facilities to form a new purpose-built hospital featuring telehealth and videoconferencing capabilities.

With the nearest major hospital 450 kilometres away in South Hedland, the redevelopment aims to give the community access to telehealth technology and connect local clinicians to specialist care in the metro area.

Best Practice Software has added two new integrations in version seven of its Bp Allied practice management system, including Healthsite as its online appointment booking partner.

BP has also partnered with patient engagement platform Physitrack to allow practitioners to deliver exercise prescriptions straight to their patients’ smartphone or computer from their PMS.

A physiotherapist and a GP are behind a new Melbourne-based health technology firm called HealthAide, which is developing a free online resource and tailored email newsletters to provide reliable information to patients on healthcare and health technology.

The company is also investigating using artificial intelligence technologies to personalise the newsletters for each patient and their condition, applying behavioural science.

ASX-listed patient engagement solution vendor Oneview will reduce staffing numbers by over a third as it undertakes a restructure following the failure of an agreement with an Australian aged care provider to develop a care management solution.

The Irish-headquartered firm has also had to revise down its expectations for total revenue for 2019 by 13 per cent year on year, with the stalled aged care deal to cost it over $1 million.

Thirteen million of the 22.7 million My Health Records now contain some clinical information, new figures from the Australian Digital Health Agency show, although most consumers appear to be uninterested in viewing their records.

In answers to a question on notice from a Senate Estimates hearing in October last year, ADHA said the total number of records accessed by a consumer was 2.07 million since the system launched in July 2012, with nearly half accessed more than once between March and October 2019.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending January 26: Speak to your EMR, health skepticism about digital health, Emotet warning, Babylon app to integrate care, EU medical device law, app monitors mental illness, palliative shared care record, computer errors in prescribing, ransoming patients, hacking heart scans, Epic distance from Google Cloud

Epic to debut ambient voice technology assistant at HIMSS20
Healthcare IT News ~ Bill Siwicki ~ 22/01/2020

“Just like you use your smart speaker at home, clinicians soon will be able to say ‘Hey Epic’ to quickly get the information they need and take action,” an Epic exec reveals.

Apple says it’s healthy to be skeptical about digital health
Computerworld ~ Jonny Evans ~ 24/01/2020

Apple’s vice president for health, Dr. Sumbul Desai, says it's important to question what digital health solutions can do.