It was a big week this week for the announcement of new digital health projects and updates on existing ones, and it got us to thinking about whether we can adequately measure the success or otherwise of this troublesome endeavour that is digital health.

A case in point was one of our top stories this week, in which Stephen Duckett from the Eastern Melbourne PHN called for the fax to be axed by 2025. (And we'd urge caution on the use of this saying, considering the UK's problems with it.) The PHN has set itself a target of helping to get rid of faxed referrals to local hospitals in five years' time, and is helping by supporting an eReferral project in its catchment area, which has seen more than 60 per cent of eligible general practices start using smart forms technology from vendors HealthLink and BPAC Informatics.

NSW Health says it is still committed to implementing a real-time prescription monitoring system but will not release to the public a Deloitte report into the state's capabilities it commissioned last year.

Meanwhile, the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has confirmed it has been asked to review the current state of RTPM implementations across the country, despite Health Minister Greg Hunt promising to implement a national system by the end of 2018.

The national RTPM system, known as ERRCD, was first announced in February 2012, with all states given a free licence to software first developed in Tasmania.

The Australian Digital Health Agency has selected nine software companies to take part in a scheme to integrate the My Health Record with systems used by medical specialists.

The offer to the industry was made in May and involves up to $40,000 to add functionality to clinical software to encourage specialists to use the My Health Record in private practice.

Digital health platform developer iMOKO will work with practice management system vendor Intrahealth to expand the virtual services iMOKO provides to underserved communities in New Zealand.

iMOKO has been developed specifically for community-based virtual health services, particularly aimed at Maori and schoolchildren, and involves a tablet-based app that allows non-clinical staff to take photos and notes of skin and dental conditions and send them to clinicians for diagnosis.

Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (EMPHN) has seen the volume of electronic referrals being sent by GPs to local hospitals and health services increase from almost nothing to 1000 a month in the last two years and hopes to see all referrals sent electronically within five years.

The PHN is part of the Victorian eReferrals project, along with Austin Health, Eastern Health, Banyule Community Health Service and Carrington Health Service, that is using BPAC's SeNT eReferral and HealthLink's SmartForms eReferral technologies to allow GPs to electronically refer from within their clinical workflow.

Residential aged care facilities in the Sydney Local Health District (LHD) region are set to take part in a 12-month trial of an app designed to help provide a rapid response to flu outbreaks among residents.

The trial will involve staff recording data about suspected cases of influenza-like illness and flu among residents, which will then be used to inform an algorithm that will trigger alerts when the criteria for an outbreak is reached.

New Zealand's Health Quality and Safety Commission is in the market for improved systems to manage its quarterly adult patient experience surveys, which since their launch have collected responses from over 200,000 participants.

The inpatient experience survey (IPES) began in 2014 and the primary care patient experience survey (PCPES) was launched in 2016 and collects data from about 80 per cent of NZ general practices.

Tasmanian premier Will Hodgman has removed under-pressure state health minister Michael Ferguson as part of a cabinet reshuffle, appointing Sarah Courtney (pictured) in his place.

Mr Ferguson has been under fire over increasing levels of ambulance ramping at Royal Hobart Hospital. A recent summit on the health system was described by Liberal colleague Sue Hickey as an ”episode of Utopia”.

Northern Queensland Primary Health Network is running a trial of Healthily's GoShare content distribution platform, funding 40 licences and inviting interested doctors and allied health practitioners in the region to take part over the next 12 months.

GoShare is a library of health resources that can be customised and sent to patients via SMS or email and is aimed at improving patient self-management behaviours and encouraging them to take a more active role in their health.

Health technology start-up Rosemary Health is set to launch a new medications home delivery service that it hopes will help community pharmacies get ahead of the looming threat of Amazon.

The platform, which is mainly aimed at people with chronic conditions taking multiple medications, allows patients to scan their script, check prices, order and pay all on one app. The medications are then delivered to their home or workplace on the same day.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending June 30: NHSX boss acknowledges scepticism, Fitbit links to Cardiogram, Romanian hospitals hit, privacy barrier to interoperability, AI and EMRs, 5G connects ambos to ED, Nova Scotia breach, pharmacist access to UK SCR, Alexa for heart attacks, AI detects early breast cancer

Gould understands NHS IT ‘scepticism’ but is hopeful for NHSX opportunity
Digital Health News ~ Hannah Crouch ~ 27/06/2019

He acknowledged the fact that NHSX follows a long line of much-promised IT change across the health system, such as the National Programme for IT and Care Dot Data.

Fitbit users now have access to Cardiogram's heart condition-detecting deep neural network
MobiHealthNews ~ Laura Lovett ~ 27/06/2019

Fitbit users can also become part of Cardiogram and UC San Francisco's Health eHeart Study.

One of our top stories this week was the retirement of Queensland Health director-general Michael Walsh after four years in the role, having had a few stints previously with NSW Health. Some in the Brisbane media thought they had a scalp following recent revelations that Mr Walsh had admitted that the roll-out of the state's Cerner integrated electronic medical record had been a big more challenging than acknowledged publicly.

Quelle surprise. Implementing an EMR in a large hospital system is enormously difficult and fraught, as numerous examples here and around the world attest to. And in Queensland, the ieMR roll out has never been smooth. Some clinicians still loathe it and would far prefer to stick to existing software or to try something different. That's highly unlikely at this stage, and we think Mr Walsh's comments were basic common sense.

The latest releases of practice management system Medtech32 and the cloud-based Medtech Evolution both now allow patient recall information to be transferred with the rest of their medical record to new providers through GP2GP.

While the other PMSs on the market have the capability, changes have now been made to the GP2GP patient record import and export function in Medtech's market-leading software so when a patient moves to a new practice, their recall information is sent too.

Murray Primary Health Network (PHN) and two local primary care partnerships are supporting a pilot study looking at the use of wearable devices linked to a smartphone app to help reduce avoidable hospital admissions.

The study is using a range of devices from iHealth connected to an app from HealthBeats, which are distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Propell Health, to see if patients can better manage their health from home.

Melbourne's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre has gone live in its pharmacy with the H68 electronic controlled drug register from local vendor Modeus.

HS8 is a paperless platform for hospital-wide controlled drug processes that integrates with pharmacy dispense and inventory software as well as hospital patient administration systems so all data on controlled drugs gets transferred to one system.

A technology-enabled home designed for people with complex intellectual disabilities has opened in Melbourne's East Brighton, equipped with a range of assistive technologies that are being studied by Deakin University researchers.

Support and accommodation provider St John of God Accord has built the five-bedroom home and is using technologies developed in collaboration with ASX-listed HomeStay as a blueprint for future accommodation for people with an intellectual disability.

ACT Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris has announced she will be standing down on July 1.

Ms Fitzharris said in a statement that the decision was a personal one, stemming from a desire to better balance her family life.

Queensland Health director-general Michael Walsh has announced his retirement after four years in the position.

Mr Walsh, a former eHealth NSW CEO/CIO and chief executive of HealthShare NSW, will finish up in September. Queensland Health has begun a search for his replacement.

Mr Walsh oversaw the roll-out of Queensland Health's $1.26 billion, 20-year health ICT strategy, which includes the implementation of the digital hospital version of Cerner's Millennium EMR in over 20 hospitals.

Royal Melbourne Hospital will go live with the new Parkville electronic medical record in its emergency department this weekend, to be followed by the full implementation of the $124 million Epic system in the rest of the Parkville precinct in May 2020.

Royal Melbourne formerly used the Symphony ED system, which is no longer supported by its vendor, and is adapting the Epic system used at the Royal Children's Hospital.

Victoria's Ballarat Health Service (BHS) has gone to tender for a new referral management system that can handle multiple modes of referral, including by letter, fax and electronically, and can integrate with the health service's patient administration systems iPM and webPAS, and its BOSSnet digital medical record.

BHS plans to use the system initially for its specialist outpatients clinics before expanding it to the rest of the health service and the Grampians Rural Health Alliance (GRHA).

Bendigo Health has expanded its Geri-Connect geriatric medicine telehealth service into the Hume region, offering remote assessments and consultations to residents of aged care facilities and those receiving respite care.

The service is provided by six geriatricians based at Bendigo Hospital who run clinics three days a week. The service provides advice to GPs and residents, and also includes aged care assessments for people requiring residential care.

Northern Queensland Primary Health Network (NQPHN) has launched a new free telehealth service for residents of Mareeba and the Atherton Tablelands region after terminating its contract with after-hours GP provider Call My Doctor after just six months.

According to the Cairns Post, the PHN and Call My Doctor had been at odds over payment and an alleged contractual dispute. In a statement issued on Friday, NQPHN CEO John Gregg said the organisation had terminated its service contract with Call My Doctor “because of a number of serious breaches of the contract”.

Researchers studying the use of the My Health Record at Westmead Hospital's rapid access cardiology clinic (RACC) are moving into the next phase of the project, investigating barriers to information sharing between patients and healthcare providers and between primary and acute care.

The study, one of 15 My Health Record 'test beds' announced in July last year, is looking at the use of My Health Record to support risk stratification of patients referred to the clinic. The project is also looking at the potential for a cardiology-specific app populated with MyHR information.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending June 23: Digital health system in Finland, GP at Hand in Birmingham, data breach causes bankruptcy, 'axe the fax' is premature, Facebook predicts mental health, digital pathology through AI, eTriage in urgent care, telehealth by TV, infusion pump vulnerabilities

Digital Finland: Towards an ecosystem of health and wellbeing apps
MobiHealthNews ~ Philipp Grätzel von Grätz ~ 18/06/2019

Patient access to the individual digital data is implemented via the My Kanta portal which has become hugely popular in Finland.

GP at Hand to go live in Birmingham after expansion is approved
Digital Health News ~ Andrea Downey ~ 19/06/2019

The local CCG is footing the bill for the entire patient list, which has sparked heavy backlash from doctors and politicians.

The WA Department of Health got a a bit of a rap over the knuckles this week from WA Auditor-General Caroline Spencer, who noted in her report into a two-year delay rolling out PathWest's new laboratory information system that this sort of thing had happened perhaps one too many times before.

It was a gentle rap considering some of the horrors WA Health has had with IT projects over the last few years – Fiona Stanley Hospital and the centralised computing projectimmediately spring to mind – but you get the feeling that Ms Spencer agreed with former under-treasurer John Langoulant's comments last year that the state really has to pull up its socks when it comes to project governance.

MidCentral District Health Board has developed a five-year digital health program of investment that it hopes will transform health and wellness services in the district, which includes Horowhenua, Tararua, Palmerston North, Manawatū, and Ōtaki.

The strategy will build on initiatives it has already implemented as part of the Central region's Regional Health Informatics Program, which has seen it deploy core regional applications such as a clinical portal, radiology information system, picture archiving and communication system and the webPAS patient administration system.

The new laboratory information system being rolled out for Western Australia's public pathology service PathWest will be two years late and over budget by $23.7 million, mainly due to poor ICT project governance and delivery, the WA Office of the Auditor-General has reported.

WA went to market in 2015 for the replacement of PathWest's legacy Ultra system, an in-house anatomical pathology system and four molecular genomics databases, with US firm SCC Computer successful in winning a competitive tender in 2016.

Clinical staff at four of the five Midland region district health boards can now access the New Zealand ePrescribing Service (NZePS) to see patient medications data in real time through the Midland Clinical Portal (MCP).

The NZePS is a prescription exchange broker that is also available to general practices through the Medtech, MyPractice or Indici practice management systems and through community pharmacy dispensing systems.

Perth diagnostic imaging centre Women's & Breast Imaging has connected to the My Health Record and will begin uploading reports from breast and gynaecological ultrasound scans and mammograms directly to the system.

Women will be able to view the reports on their record after seven days, although they will be available for clinicians to view immediately if required, potentially cutting down on duplication and unnecessary tests.

The NSW government will spend $92.4 million on digital health technology projects in the 2019-20 financial year, including money to link NSW Ambulance with hospital medical records in real time.

The funds were promised in the 2017-18 budget as part of an eight-year, $536m investment in eHealth NSW on a vast program of digital health initiatives, including the continued roll out of electronic medical records and electronic medication management systems.

The Sydney Adventist Hospital (the San) is currently automating its cancer services multi-disciplinary team meetings (MDTs) using a new integrated cancer information management system (ICIMS) from the Sydney firm Innovative Clinical Information Management Systems (iCIMS).

The new system is built on iCIMS’ LATTICE platform and is aimed at streamlining and automating data preparation, data collection and workflows for each of the San's 10 tumour stream MDTs. MDT meetings bring together a team of healthcare professionals to determine a patient's treatment plan and are widely used in cancer care.

This project is part of the San's plans for a cancer centre of excellence, including its state-of-the-art multi-disciplinary meeting room (pictured above), to become the leading cancer service in Australia.

Wimmera Base Hospital in Horsham will soon be linking its intensive care unit to a critical care specialist at Melbourne’s The Alfred Hospital through telehealth, part of an extension to a critical care telehealth project pioneered at Mildura Base Hospital in 2017.

Wimmera Health Care Group is one of three regional areas trialling the telehealth model this year, with Bairnsdale Regional Health Service and Central Gippsland Health also taking part, supported by Safer Care Victoria.

Patient education specialist Healthily has integrated its GoShare platform with clinical and practice management software MedicalDirector.

GoShare enables practitioners to deliver health information and resources to patients in a variety of formats such as patient and carer videos, animations, fact sheets and apps. GPs and nurses can customise bundles of health resources and deliver an “information prescription” to their patient via email or SMS.

Eye health clinical communications platform Oculo has teamed up with Singapore-based parental screening tool developer plano to allow users of the plano app to tap into Oculo's network of optometrists for an easy referral.

plano was developed by eye specialist Mo Dirani to help modify children's device-using behaviour and reduce myopia-related risk factors. The app has been downloaded by 3500 Australian parents and the two companies hope to increase this to over 100,000 in Australia and New Zealand over the next 12 months.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending June 16: Fixing flawed EMRs, unique patient IDs, blockchain for pharma supply chain, US office for EHR modernisation, GP at Hand disruption, Boots repeat script app, 50-year-old system with MUMPS, Epic partners Humana for real-time costs

Why EHRs are flawed, and how they can be fixed
Health Data Management ~ David Lareau ~ 13/06/2019

Regardless of whether organizations choose to keep or replace their current IT solutions, it’s clear that physician dissatisfaction is high and that, as an industry, it’s time to advance the dialogue and take action to fix our flawed EHRs where they hurt most.

House approves lifting HHS ban on unique patient IDs
Healthcare Info Security ~ Marianne Kolbasuk McGee ~ 13/06/2019

The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved an amendment to a proposed appropriations bill that would lift a 20-year ban on the Department of Health and Human Services funding the development or adoption of a unique, national patient identifier, but plenty of hurdles remain.

There's a lot about working at the pointy end of the healthcare system that annoys GPs, but “GP to chase” test results ordered while the patient was in hospital has to be up there with the worst of them. Even when prefaced with the word “kindly”, reading a discharge summary written by a junior medical officer with a demand that the GP do the work the hospital doctors should be doing is enough to drive many of them to distraction.

While no one is saying that the My Health Record will put an end to this, the ability to see a patient's results with the click of a button or two and not have to spend time on the phone with the hospital is one of the system's selling points for GPs. Last month, SA Health joined most of the other jurisdictions in beginning to upload pathology and diagnostic imaging reports to the My Health Record from its hospitals, but in a new move SA Pathology is also doing so for tests that GPs themselves have requested from the public provider.

Helen Parker has been named as David Oldershaw's replacement as chief executive of Pinnacle Midlands Health Network (MHN), having spent the past two years as general manager of its Pinnacle Ventures innovation arm.

Ms Parker was previously general manager for strategic development at Pinnacle and led the PHO's Health Care Home program.

Bridget Kirkham, the inaugural CEO of the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA), died in Sydney last week aged 65. Bridget worked tirelessly through her career championing the cause of health and healthcare in many roles.

She turned the MSIA organisation of interesting volunteer people into a collective view focused on the best outcomes for the patients while supporting an industry, innovation, and its operators. She was forthright in her conviction, but sensitive and caring in her demeanour and was concerned for the wellbeing of others, often at her own expense.

A telehealth service that can provide diagnosis, treatment and genetic counselling to people with young-onset dementia (YOD) living in regional areas of Victoria has launched from Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Services will be provided by the neuropsychiatry unit of NorthWestern Mental Health, which is located within the hospital in Parkville.

SA Health is now uploading inpatient pathology and diagnostic imaging reports to the My Health Record from the majority of its metro and rural hospitals, and the state is claiming a first with SA Pathology also now uploading community pathology reports ordered by GPs.

SA Health has also built a viewer to allow hospital clinicians to view pathology and diagnostic imaging reports and discharge summaries held on the MyHR, with plans to enable native viewing from the state's Sunrise EMR in the future.

The Australian Department of Health has released a test version of the newly redesigned My Aged Care website, which has undergone a revamp as one element of a $61.7 million investment announced in the 2018 federal budget.

The changes are predominantly aimed at consumers and include enhancements such as an updated service finder tool, use of more white space to help people with vision impairments and people with cognitive decline, and new content written in plain English.

The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN) will no longer auto-fax discharge summaries to patients' GPs and will instead only send them via secure messaging services Argus, HealthLink or Medical-Objects.

Discharge summaries are also available in the patient's My Health Record or the HealtheNet clinical portal.

Sydney Children's Hospital Network CEO Michael Brydon has stood down with immediate effect amid a continuing deterioration in the relationship between medical staff at the network's two hospitals.

Dr Brydon's place will be filled in the interim by SCHN's director of clinical integration Cheryl McCullagh, who has led much of the network's digital health program.

The Queensland government has allocated additional funding of $77.4 million in today's budget to extend its specialist outpatients strategy, which has seen new eReferral and appointment management systems introduced and remote access to hospital records provided to GPs.

Queensland Health will also invest $92.1 million in prioritised ICT categories this year, including the continued roll-out of the Cerner integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR), now live in 15 hospitals following go-lives at Gold Coast University Hospital and Robina Hospital. An ieMR with advanced capability will be rolled out to a total of 28 sites by September 2021.

Best Practice Software is in beta testing mode for its Best Health app, which will allow practices using its Premier package to communicate with patients through their smartphone.

Patients will also be able to access a health summary and receive clinical reminders on their phones.

NPS MedicineWise has released an update to its popular smartphone app that will now allow carers who look after one or more people to keep details of all of their medications in the one app.

The new carers functionality has been funded by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) and also allows people who have more than one carer to share their medicine details with multiple people.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending June 9: US health data breach spreads to three lab test groups, WannaCry still a threat to health systems, NHS App Library, HIMSS says FHIR R4 should be requirement, Skype doctors for home care, core cancer data elements, US needs unique health identifier, software-as-a-medical-device

Quest Diagnostics: data on 12 million patients exposed
Healthcare Info Security ~ Marianne Kolbasuk McGee ~ 03/06/2019

A data breach at American Medical Collection Agency has affected nearly 12 million patients who had lab tests performed by Quest Diagnostics.

LabCorp data also compromised by breach at AMCA
Health Data Management ~ Joseph Goedert ~ 05/06/2019

LabCorp, a major medical testing firm, is the latest entity to be embroiled in the huge data breach experienced by Quest Diagnostics.

It's been a big week in national eHealth projects with the Australian Digital Health Agency announcing some serious growth in connections to the My Health Record in the community pharmacy sector. More general practices have also connected over the last year to register a substantial 92 per cent of all general practices – we don't think there will be any more growth there as some GPs will permanently opt themselves out – but it looks like the pharmacy sector is seeing some benefit in signing up, even without financial incentives.

There was also some news in the pathology sector, with NT Health revealing it hopes to be the first jurisdiction in the country to add links in the pathology reports it uploads to the My Health Record to the Lab Tests Online (LTO) website. This excellent little resource has been around for a decade or more and provides a wealth of information about the often obscure world of pathology, so much so that the rumour is more medical students use it than the general public.

The commonly used LOINC codes for laboratory tests, measurements and observations will be added to the National Clinical Terminology Service (NCTS), joining the SNOMED terminology already on offer to Australian software developers and implementers.

The NCTS is administered by the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) and uses the CSIRO's Ontoserver system to provide a single database of clinical terminologies for the sector.

The Northern Territory Department of Health will soon become the first pathology provider to link pathology reports in a patient's My Health Record directly with the Lab Tests Online website to assist consumers in finding information about the test and its results.

Lab Tests Online is currently redeveloping its homepage to support the expected new audience and eventually hopes to be able to provide direct access from individual test reports to the relevant pages on the site.

Clinical coding software vendor Eurofield Information Solutions (EIS) has released the latest version of its TurboCoder system, promising improvements in productivity and accurate searching capabilities.

TurboCoder is used in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Saudi Arabia as a clinical coding reference tool for the ICD-10 Australian modification of the classification of diseases and related health problems.

Queensland Health has issued an invitation to vendors to tender for an off the shelf patient reported experience measures (PREMs) and outcome measures (PROMs) solution for the whole state.

It is looking for a cloud-based solution that can collect and report PREMs and PROMs in real-time, with patients able to fill out surveys on an app and see trended results for PROMs, and the ability to aggregate data to compare different hospitals and clinical specialties.

The ACT government allocated $70 million over four years in yesterday's budget to support its digital health strategy, including the procurement and roll out of its promised digital health record.

ACT Health released the 10-year strategy in May, promising the development of an integrated digital health record that will act as a single digital source of truth for clinical information.

The number of general practices and community pharmacies that have signed up to the My Health Record has grown substantially, new figures show, with nine in 10 general practices and 83 per cent of pharmacies now connected to the system.

Growth has been strongest in the pharmacy sector over the last year, which prior to the beginning of the opt-out period had only one in three pharmacies connected.

Wellington-headquartered imaging software specialist Volpara Health Technologies will go to the market to raise $A55 million to help fund its proposed acquisition of US medical software company MRS Systems and further growth.

The ASX-listed Volpara, which markets clinical applications for breast screening clinics as well as enterprise-wide software, plans to buy MRS Systems for just over $A21 million and will issue shares to raise $45 million from institutional shareholders and $10m from current investors.

The 126-bed John Hunter Children's Hospital in Newcastle in northern NSW has gone live with Citadel Health's Charm oncology information solution in its paediatric oncology service.

The solution will help the hospital's Children's Cancer and Haematology Service with prescribing and administering chemotherapy to paediatric patients, moving from a previously paper-based system.

Telstra Health is working on transitioning the federal bowel cancer screening program to the National Cancer Screening Register over the next several months, with the register now fully operational for cervical screening and handling about 120,000 HL7 messages a day.

The last of the state-based cervical screening registers was closed a fortnight ago and all except a handful of laboratories are now sending results to the register electronically as HL7 messages that are compliant with the Australian standard.

Former shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has been named as the new spokesperson for health for the federal opposition, with Tasmanian MP Julie Collins taking on ageing and mental health.

Catherine King, who was shadow health minister for six years, has been moved to the infrastructure, transport and regional development portfolio.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending June 2: eHealth in east Africa, FDA pre-cert program for medical software, UCLA Health in Azure, vendors say interop rules too restrictive, GP at Hand funding row, Docker vulnerability, notes aid adherence, Google Health guy goes to Facebook, Apple adds to Watch, NHS internet first, telehealth apps on Epic Orchard

How Central, East Africa's tech renaissance is shaping its healthcare future
MobiHealthNews ~ Laura Lovett ~ 24/05/2019

Rwanda is to the point where everybody has got an EHR. Does everybody in Europe or US have that, does everyone have access to it?

FDA seeks software developer test cases for precertification program
Health Data Management ~ Greg Slabodkin ~ 28/05/2019

The Pre-Cert program for software developers is aimed at fast-tracking digital health products to market.

Brisbane turned on a late autumn stunner for an HL7 Australia meeting that Pulse+IT attended in the Queensland capital this week to hear all about the localised pathology and referral messaging standard that has been published by HL7 Australia. The turnout was pretty good too considering the esoteric nature of the meeting, which covered all things HL7 v2, along with FHIR, PITUS, NCTS, NCSR, NPAAC and other acronym allsorts.

The expert crowd smiled knowingly when mention was made of previous attempts at developing standards that would miraculously bring interoperability to secure messaging over the years. Jared Davison, the chief technology officer of secure messaging vendor Medical-Objects, began his presentation with a slide from back in 2007 that could easily be used today, and pathology informatics expert Michael Legg went even further back when he mentioned there'd been a mention of standards in Hammurabi's code back in 1754 BCE.

Former Australian Digital Health Agency acting CEO Richard Royle has joined the board of Sydney-based app developer MedApps.

The company is rolling out its Resident Guide app to many local health districts in NSW. The app helps new doctors with orientation and access to procedures, protocols, rosters and schedules.

Brisbane-based start-up Wanngi has added an immunisation management feature to its eponymous app, allowing parents to track and set reminders for their children's vaccination schedule, and now also has the ability to accept CDA documents on mobile or laptop devices for users travelling to the US.

The Wanngi app, which allows consumers to create their own personal health record, manage fitness goals and track symptoms and injuries, is also set to provide a link to the user's My Health Record when approved by the Australian Digital Health Agency.

Christchurch-based pharmacy software vendor Toniq has expanded its Pill Pictures database to now feature more than 1100 colour images, aimed at helping pharmacists and other health professionals to identify medications.

Toniq bought the database along with the assets of fellow Kiwi firm drugIDNZ in 2018 and has now upgraded and expanded it to almost double the number of images it originally had.

Victorian health services are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks and none have implemented the full set of 72 baseline cybersecurity controls introduced in March 2016, a Victorian Auditor-General's Office (VAGO) audit has found.

VAGO's external investigators were able to exploit key weaknesses in physical and logical security in four audited agencies and access patient data to demonstrate what it calls a “significant and present risk” to the security of data and hospital services.

Auckland-based primary health organisation ProCare will pilot the new Indici practice management system developed by Valentia Technologies at three member practices in advance of a recommended roll-out to the wider ProCare network.

ProCare chose Indici as its recommended PMS after a year-long review beginning in December 2017. The cloud-based system was first developed in association with Pinnacle Midlands Health Network and was also named the preferred PMS by Wellington PHO Tu Ora Compass Health in 2017.

Private hospital provider Ramsay Health Care has signed an agreement with Baxter Healthcare to install more than 5000 of Baxter's new Evo IQ infusion system smart pumps in Ramsay hospitals in Australia.

Evo IQ features an advanced drug library and dose error reduction software to promote patient safety. The drug library allows hospitals to curate a list of medications and fluids and set appropriate dose ranges.

Canterbury District Health Board has rolled out the Florence patient self check-in technology at the newly reopened Christchurch Outpatients building, allowing patients to scan in their appointment letters and update their information.

Florence has also been rolled out at Auckland DHB, where it has been implemented at the busy Greenlane ophthalmology clinic to improve patient flow and waiting times.

General practice innovation organisation Pinnacle Ventures has completed a quick-fire move of 30 years of general practice data to the public cloud, building a data lake using Amazon Web Services' (AWS) simple storage service (S3) and massively reducing the price it pays for data storage and handling.

Pinnacle Ventures, which is based in Hamilton in New Zealand and manages the data and IT services for the Pinnacle Midlands Health Network PHO, has used a SQL Server model of managing data for a number of years.

However, a visit to the AWS re:Invent cloud conference in Las Vegas last November saw the company decide to move from infrastructure that while adequate, required a lot of manual processing and was increasingly time consuming.

Former Simavita CEO Philippa Lewis has extended her temporary contract with ASX-listed smart home technology vendor HomeStay Care, agreeing to stay on for another 12 months.

HomeStay Care's platform allows older people and people with disabilities to live independently through the use of apps, artificial intelligence and motion sensors.

Greg Hunt has retained his position as Minister for Health in the newly elected Coalition government, with an extra role as assistant minister for the public service and cabinet.

Former Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt has been promoted to cabinet as Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the first Indigenous person to hold the role.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending May 26: NHS call for agile GP systems, Amazon's emotional device, cyber firm data breach, Apple Watch ECG in Canada, hospital EMR ROI, health IT evaluation framework, FDA warning on unauthorised medical devices, outdated screening software, EMR training improves satisfaction, WannaCry threat remains

Tech companies challenged to develop new GP IT systems
Digital Health News ~ Hannah Crouch ~ 23/05/2019

Sick patients should not be having to explain ‘why are you here’ for the umpteenth time every time they meet a new clinician, or carting round bulging folders of notes from appointment to appointment.

Amazon is working on a device that can read human emotions
Bloomberg ~ Matt Day ~ 23/05/2019

Designed to work with a smartphone app, the device has microphones paired with software that can discern the wearer’s emotional state from the sound of his or her voice.

The development of a national primary care data service for New Zealand is still on the drawing-board despite hopes it would be up and running by now, with its backers looking towards 2020 to get the initiative off the ground.

The big four primary healthcare organisations (PHOs) and some partners went to the market in 2017 for expressions of interest in developing and operating the service, which they envisaged would bring together a number of currently fragmented data sets to provide a comparative view of population health for the whole country.

A pharmacist-written shared medicines list for people with chronic conditions and taking multiple medications is set to be added to the My Health Record from next month, aimed at providing better medicines information during transitions of care.

The Pharmacist Shared Medicines List (PSML), which is expected to be available in the next release of the My Health Record in the middle of June, will include both prescription and non-prescription medications, including over-the-counter and complementary medicines.

New Zealand's new deputy director-general for data and digital at the Ministry of Health has confirmed that the ministry is no longer pursuing the idea of a single, national electronic health record for all New Zealanders and instead is working on joining up exisiting and emerging information sources through its rebadged national health information platform (nHIP).

The Ministry is however planning to run a proof of concept of a new MyMeds app for consumers that will list all of the medications prescribed for them by their GP or on discharge from hospital and dispensed through a community pharmacy. The app may potentially link to the NZ Formulary for medicines information.

Adelaide-headquartered intelligent virtual agent developer Clevertar has emerged intact from voluntary administration as a going concern, promising to continue development of its avatar technology.

Clevertar entered voluntary administration in March, citing a need to restructure its business affairs to continue trading.

The 450-bed Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital has gone live with NSW Health's Cerner electronic medications management (eMeds) system, with others in the South Western Sydney Local Health District set to follow over the next two years.

The multimillion dollar project has also seen a significant number of computers integrated into the clinical workflow, including all-in-one workstations on wheels, laptops and tablets for medication dispensing.

A demonstration home for the NDIS specialist disability accommodation program has opened in the Melbourne suburb of Preston, featuring technology from Tunstall Healthcare, home automation experts Techsmax and fittings and electronic access systems firm Hafele Australia.

The Assistive Housing Hub aims to help community care organisations understand the range of in-home technology available to allow for independent and supported living.

James Scollay has been appointed CEO of clinical and practice management software vendor Genie Solutions, having acted in the role since February 2018.

Mr Scollay, a former MYOB general manager, was originally appointed executive chairman of the company in December 2017 by Genie's majority owner, IFM Investors.

Western Sydney Primary Health Network (WentWest) has named Ray Messom, currently the executive director of the NSW Ministry of Health's System Information and Analytics (SIA) branch, as its new CEO, starting in July.

Mr Messom will take over from Walter Kmet, who led WentWest for seven years before taking up the job of CEO of Macquarie University Hospital in March.

Our friend, mentor and digital health crusader passed away in Melbourne on Monday 13 May 2019. Andrew’s inveterate passion and rampant enthusiasm for making a difference changed healthcare services for all Australians.

Andrew began his career journey in medical practice. He was frustrated by paper medical charts, patient files and hard copy ECGs and pathology reports that were being misfiled and lost. He knew that there was a better way.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending May 19: Digital health product evaluation, digital health formulary, living up to digital health's potential, ditching pagers, Jawbone resurrection, virtual health for diabetic veterans, Navajo data sharing deal, GP at Hand destabilising primary care, Anthem data hack indictment

Digital health: a path to validation
npj Digital Medicine ~ Simon Mathews ~ 13/05/2019

There is a need for objective, transparent, and standards-based evaluation of digital health products that can bring greater clarity to the digital health marketplace.

Express Scripts maps plans for inaugural digital health formulary
Health Data Management ~ Fred Bazzoli ~ 16/05/2019

It will be a curated list of technology- and software-enabled applications and devices that help patients prevent, manage or treat a medical condition.

Half of Australia will probably be at their polling stations chomping on a democracy sausage and voting early and often when this missive lands in your inbox, but amid all the excitement and the scent of a sausage sizzle, there's still time for our round-up of the week that was in digital health.

Earlier in the week, we had a chat with emergency department specialist Naren Gunja, who also happens to the chief medical information officer for the Western Sydney Local Health District, home to Westmead, Blacktown, Mt Druitt, Auburn and Cumberland hospitals.

InterSystems has released a new version of its TrakCare healthcare information system that extends the mobile-enabled user interface introduced last year to all clinical modules.

The new version has been built on the company's IRIS for Health data platform, which will allow InterSystems to offer FHIR and SMART on FHIR support to boost system interoperability, cloud scalability and big data capabilities.

Cloud-based clinical software vendor MediRecords has completed the roll-out of its practice management enterprise solution (PMES) for Queensland Health, replacing the legacy practiX system in 13 Hospital and Health Services (HHSs).

MediRecords won a hotly contested contract over a dozen other vendors in April 2018 to replace practiX. It went live in the first site, Darling Downs HHS, in August 2018 and has just completed that two last and largest sites, Brisbane's Metro South and Metro North.

Microsoft has issued patches for older versions of Windows, including those no longer supported, following the discovery of a vulnerability in remote desktop services, formerly known as terminal services.

Patches have been released for Windows 7 and Windows XP, which are still commonly used in the healthcare industry, as well as Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003.

Clinical and practice management software vendor Zedmed has launched its Doctor's App, allowing doctors and allied health practitioners to view patient appointments, clinical histories, results and active recalls on iOS and Android devices.

The Doctor's App is designed to work in conjunction with a standard Zedmed installation and is a major feature of the company's expanded product range strategy, which saw a big new version released late last year.

Pen CS has teamed up with the Australian Medical Association to add its doctorportal Learning continuing professional development app to Pen's Topbar clinical decision support tool.

The app will allow doctors to access the portal without leaving their clinical information system. It also includes customised set up and prompt building capabilities for doctorportal so general practices can set learning goals for their teams based on practice population health goals and and the new PIP QI requirements.

Children's Health Queensland has adopted the new paediatric statewide referral criteria (SRC) for outpatient referrals into Queensland Children's Hospital.

The criteria are being used to standardise referrals, triage and categorisation across Queensland to ensure consistency of practice and efficiency in referral processing.

Sydney's 1000-bed Westmead Hospital has gone live with new electronic medications management (eMeds) and electronic fluid orders and drug infusions (eFluids) systems from Cerner, along with an uplift to the existing version of the electronic medical record and the latest version of the FirstNet emergency department system.

The go-live at Westmead last week follows a pioneering implementation at Auburn Hospital six months ago and at Blacktown Hospital two months ago as part of Western Sydney Local Health District's Digital Health Clinical Program, which is upgrading the clinical systems in all five hospitals in the LHD.

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) is offering vendors of clinical information systems for the specialist medical market up to $40,000 to work on adding tailored functionality to their software to encourage specialists to use the My Health Record in private practice.

The offer is limited to 10 vendors and will involve a payment for developing a detailed software design document that describes how the vendor would add or enhance My Health Record functionality, followed by a final payment if the design idea is approved.

ADHA chief operating officer Bettina McMahon said the offer was different to previous offers to vendors in the GP and pharmacy markets in that it will be an exercise in co-design and the vendor will retain the intellectual property rights.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending May 12: Open notes beneficial to patients, Kaiser Permanente targets SDoH, NHS GP numbers plunge, robo-kitties help elderly, AI for retinal imaging, vulnerability in Philips' Tasy EMR, Apple plans health app boost, avoiding another WannaCry, NowICU video for NICU, California ambulance joins HIE

Patients report benefits of having access to EHR clinical notes
Health Data Management ~ Joseph Goedert ~ 07/05/2019

Patients derive multiple benefits, including the ability to better manage their care, if they can access their electronic health records to read clinicians’ notes after medical visits.

Kaiser Permanente building infrastructure to 'connect the dots' for social determinants
FierceHealthcare ~ Heather Landi ~ 08/05/2019

The health system is partnering with Unite Us, a social determinants technology and care coordination platform, to build the technology infrastructure that will enable Kaiser Permanente to better address social determinants and "connect all the dots in a systematic way" for its millions of members.

Most of Pulse+IT's readers don't need to be reminded that the My Health Record has come in for some pretty harsh criticism over the last seven years, quite a bit of it emanating from us. In that time there has been a lot to criticise but it's also fair to say there are loads of true believers out there who have held firm, hoping even in the chilliest times that the system would heat up and get some things sorted.

Over those seven years there has been the odd good news story about the system in action rather than theory, some coming from actual users rather than spruikers. Patient advocate Harry Iles-Mann makes a compelling case for using the system, and there are several reports of clinicians finding something useful on the various medicines documents, for example. The Australian Journal of Pharmacy had a little story on how the MyHR proved worthy during the Townsville floods earlier this year. We'd argue that after seven years you'd bloody well hope so but nonetheless, there are good news stories filtering through.

Wagga Wagga Base Hospital in NSW is running a proof of concept trial looking at how pathology results and risk indicators can be shared in real time on iPads, iPhones and Apple Watches in its emergency department.

The trial is using Alcidion’s Miya Precision clinical decision support tool and CSIRO's ED re-admission risk algorithm with the hope that it can assist clinicians with clinical decision-making in critical environments.

Eastern Health's addiction treatment and research centre Turning Point has won a $1.2 million grant from Google to develop a national suicide monitoring system over the next three years.

The project will use artificial intelligence methodologies to streamline coding of national ambulance suicide-related attendance data, which will then be used to inform public health prevention and interventions, as well as identifying populations and geographical hotspots for targeted responses.

A project to develop new tools that can interact with GP desktop software to identify potential cases of previously undetected chronic disease is set to go into a pilot testing phase after receiving funding from the federal government's Medical Research Future Fund.

The Future Health Today program, a partnership between Western Health and the University of Melbourne, follows on from the chronic disease early detection and improved management in primary care (CD IMPACT) project, which used Pen CS's PrimaryCare Sidebar and Clinical Audit Tool (CAT) and Precedence Healthcare's cdmNET chronic disease management system.

Melbourne-based telehealth provider Cyber Clinic has won a contract with South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (SEMPHN) to provide free video consultations with psychologists for eligible people living in the area with mild depression or anxiety.

The service is being funded by SEMPHN under its Accessible Psychological Interventions (API) service, part of its stepped care model for mental health.

The ACT government has released its 10-year digital health strategy, the centrepiece of which is the development of an integrated digital health record that will act as a single digital source of truth for clinical information and be accessible by clinicians in inpatients, outpatients and the community.

The ACT will also aim to boost its electronic medical record adoption model score, which it calculates is currently sitting at 1.5 out of a possible score of 7, and focus on implementing standards to allow integration with national digital health services to support wider sharing of information.

Global health IT security system vendor Imprivata is collaborating with Microsoft to develop what it calls the first cloud-based, end-to-end identity and access management (IAM) for clinical users.

The platform will combine Imprivata's single sign-on (SSO) capabilities with Microsoft's Azure Active Directory to allow both clinical and non-clinical staff to access apps on shared clinical workstations and mobile devices without having to repeatedly type in usernames and passwords.