The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Mater is using or trialling a wide variety of devices, including Panasonic Toughbook tablets designed specifically for the medical setting, netbooks, Cisco wireless phones and various other handheld devices, OCR pens, voice recognition (for dictation) and RFID tags on equipment and patient wristbands.
The hospitals are also committed to remote monitoring technology. Mater expects all bedside devices to connect to the network so clinicians have access to the data wherever they are.
Despite Mater's huge efforts to advance the use of IT in the medical setting, its IT expenditure is approximately 2% of revenue - "that's about [the] industry norm," said Thatcher.
Projects set to go live in the coming months include the digital recording of labour and birth details using a touchscreen system to eliminate paper form the birthing suite; a patient data management system for newborns that will, for example, remind staff to check certain pathology results; a clinical information system for the neonatal intensive care unit allowing clinicians to remotely check the progress of premature babies; and an integrated nurse-call system.
Mater is one of the first Australian hospitals to appoint a chief medical information officer (CMIO), although the position is well established in the US where around one-third of hospitals and other health care facilities have a CMIO.
Paul Devenish-Meares has been associated with Mater for the bulk of his 38 years in medicine, most recently as director of obstetrics and gynaecology. He still works as a part-time obstetrics staff specialist in addition to his three-tenths appointment as CMIO.
Devenish-Meares noted Mater executives' commitment to the importance of IT, as well as the significance of the teamwork and collaboration between staff in the IT and clinical areas of the hospitals.
He also pointed out the importance of wireless communications in the hospital setting, due to the need for access at the point of care.
Stephen Withers travelled to the Cisco Networkers conference as a guest of the company.
David Bass
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