Roxon strips final veil from ConOps

Beverley Head
Monday, 12 September 2011 15:25

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Five months to the day after releasing its draft concept of operations (ConOps) document regarding the use of personally controlled electronic health records (PCEHR), the Federal Government has unveiled the final version. The ConOps explains how the nation's e-health system will be structured, how it will work, and what security and privacy principles will be embraced.

According to the minister for health and ageing Nicola Roxon; 'The Concept of Operations will be used by our infrastructure partners to build the system to allow all Australians to sign up from July next year.' Despite multiple concerns raised during the consultation phase the regime remains opt-in, meaning that only those Australians that want a PCEHR will get one.

A number of submissions to the ConOps draft review questioned this approach, with many recommending an opt-out regime as a more sensible option in order to deliver the volumes of users that are considered necessary in order to generate confidence in the scheme and the economies of scale that would make it sustainable.

As it stands hospitals and health practitioners will be forced to operate two systems - one which allows them to access the centrally stored PCEHRs of those patients who are currently opt-in to the system, and one which maintains the status quo for those people who don't expressly sign up for the PCEHR.

But as far as the PCEHR carrot for consumers is concerned the minister said those who do opt in; 'Will no longer have to remember every medical test, immunisation or prescription they have. Doctors and other health care professionals will no longer have to rely on patients to accurately recall past treatment and will be able to work together more easily to provide better care.'

Besides unveiling the final ConOps the minister announced that there were now more than 1.1 million individual health identifiers in active use.  

Health identification numbers are the unique numbers assigned to every Australian since July 2010. They are considered one of the essential building blocks of the PCEHR, and we all have one, but the systems that make use of them are only now starting to materialise.