Beverley Head
Thursday, 29 July 2010 08:41
IT Policy -
Government Tech Policy
Page 1 of 2
In its May Budget the Federal Government committed $467 million over the next two years toward the introduction of electronic health records – now it turns out only 64 per cent of Australians want one. According to a new poll of Australians commissioned by technology vendor CSC almost a quarter of Australians actively don’t want an electronic health record.
As one of the key issues differentiating the major parties in the upcoming election (the Coalition is threatening to axe investment in electronic health records if elected) the report sheds a little more light on Australians’ perception about electronic health records.
An Access Economics report has previously suggested that investing $6.3 billion in an integrated electronic health records system could increase the net present value of GDP by as much as $13 billion over ten years and create 30,000 jobs. But it now turns out that fewer than two out of three Australians want one.
The CSC report figures are somewhat out of whack with the 2008 findings of NEHTA (the National eHealth Transition Authority) which claimed that 82 per cent of Australians favoured a personal electronic health record. Lisa Pettigrew, Director of Health Services for CSC in Australia said she was not surprised by the new 64 per cent approval figure.
However, “We were surprised that only 43 per cent (of respondents) were aware of the electronic health record proposals,” she noted. The Newspoll phone survey which underpins the report was conducted before the May budget, which catapaulted electronic health records into the limelight, which may go some way to explaining the apparent lack of awareness.
Pettigrew said that the research had some interesting insights for both Federal and NSW State politicians as they approach elections. One issue they need to consider is that of choice, as an overwhelming majority of respondents (85 per cent) wanted to be able to dictate who is allowed to see any information which is eventually stored in an electronic health record.
CSC’s report, A Rising Tide of Expectations, which was released overnight also found that 70 per cent of Australians were not willing to contribute to the costs associated with establishing and maintaining an electronic health record, instead viewing that as a Government role.
