Beverley Head
Monday, 24 May 2010 14:20
IT Policy -
Government Tech Policy
Page 1 of 2
Australia’s urgent need for a chief to drive e-health reforms was highlighted today, by the chief information officer of Singapore’s Ministry of Health Holdings who is driving a ten year investment strategy for the nation costed at up to S$1.5 billion.
Speaking about Singapore’s move toward an electronic health record Dr Sarah Muttitt told a packed session at CeBIT today that such reforms; “Clearly need someone at the helm to influence the decisions...and try to do master IT planning.”While Muttitt was speaking about progress in Singapore her remarks would resonate for many locals who are still wondering who is in charge of e-health here.
Many consider NEHTA – the national health transition authority – led by Peter Fleming and chaired by David Gonski as the natural candidate, but it would need its mandate expanded and more clout. At present the organisation has been focussed on developing health identifier numbers for the national e health record, and acting as a form of clearing house for discussions on e-health governance, standards and the like.
The Government has allocated $466.7 million to roll out an e-health record system over the next two years, but has yet to make clear who is in charge of driving broader technology based reforms across health.
Muttitt’s presentation at CeBIT provided valuable insights about how Singapore is going about overhauling its health IT systems. Creating an IT infrastructure to connect all the “honeycombs” of healthcare together, Muttitt stressed that “rather than ripping out and replacing, we have built a federated infrastructure,” which takes information from the existing health information systems.
This approach has the support of organisations such as Microsoft and Information Builders which favour e-health networks which embrace existing technology used by health professionals or Government agencies rather than attempt a big bang development.
Muttitt said that Singapore expected its investment in e-ehealth to break even within seven or eight years.
