[LINK] Building the Australian National Health Network

[Tom Worthington]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 08:30 AM 11/03/2010, Tom Worthington wrote:
>> The government could announce the goal that all public hospitals would
>> be networked ...
> 
> Been there, doing that. www.nehta.gov.au
> 
> ... this has been going on for about 10 years now, in exactly the way you suggest ...

Not quite. NEHTA seems to be more like the Communications Alliance
<http://www.commsalliance.com.au/>, in that it is creating standards by
consensus between the parties involved. NEHTA does not appear to have
the authority, nor then multi-billion dollar budget needed to implement 
a national system.take aprt


What I had in mind was something more like NBN Co., which can select the
ideas from the Communications Alliance, or elsewhere, and has the money 
to implement them, even if companies, or state governments, do not want 
to cooperate.

NEHTA only has a few hundred million dollars to work with and so needs 
the cooperation of others. Also health bodies can choose not to 
cooperate with NEHTA and still get federal funding (non-cooperation may 
take the form of participating in order to slow progress).

What I suggest would speed things up is a body with the authority and
money to implement a national health network. State and private health
service providers which choose to not to cooperate would receive no 
federal funding for health.

The NHN could provide open source software and a hosted systems, for 
those who wanted to use them, as well as standard interfaces. The 
minimum a doctor, or hospital, would need to use the system would be a 
smart phone with a web browser. They would not need any special software 
or hardware. The system would also provide online training, from simple 
introductory materials, all the way up to accredited vocational and 
tertiary courses.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890