[LINK] Australian Government spending $256M to transform government but wasting $485M on failed eHealth system

[Chris Johnson]

The Electronic Health Record project is just one of those impossible
things. No more money! stop it now. It's beyond the Auditor-General,
it's beyond everyone.
On the face of it the technical requirements are tough enough: a
lifelong persistent record for every person, with privacy provisions and
access permissions to be maintained with very intermittent, low level
access and the occasional need for emergency access under highly
stressful conditions (what's your password? who are you?
blleaaiuusucchh! says the semi-conscious patient). The social
constraints and drivers are worse, as we have found already: there is
little real incentive for individuals to participate, and clashing
cultures with everybody's expectations as a potential patient, parent,
carer, funder, statistics gatherer, and with our established cultures of
medical practice.
This is not a budgetary issue, it can't be "fixed" by throwing money -
should be classified as being, not in the Too Hard basket, but in the Do
Not Attempt This Kind of Project, it's a mirage. We collectively
struggle to design and implement transport card systems, for far fewer
people, over much shorter periods, and fewer intersecting interested
players - and with less severe consequences of partial failures. We
collectively struggle to define, implement and operate emergency vehicle
despatch systems, which are in a relatively closed system, related to
health systems.
The failure is collective: there is no small group of individuals who
failed to say "no, minister" (or "no, permanent secretary"), it's
collective hubris. We do not train IT professionals to recognise no-go
areas, only to be aware of failures with the strong implication that if
you do the next one "correctly" then you won't fail.

Tom Worthington wrote:
> Just about every year since the Australian Federal Budget was first put 
> on the web, I have done a quick search though the documents to find 
> matters of interest in information technology.
>
> IT IN THE BUDGET
> ...
>
> In 2013/2015 the Government announced it would save $31.2 M over two 
> years by incorporating the functions of the National Health Information 
> Network (NHIN) into the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record 
> (PCEHR) system. Last year $140.6 million was provided in for the PCEHR. 
> The government has now renamed the project "My Health Record":
>
>      "The Government will invest $485 million to improve the electronic 
> health record system for all Australians." 
> http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/overview/html/overview-25.htm
>
> This project has already cost many hundreds of millions of dollars for 
> little result. I suggest it requires investigation by the 
> Auditor-General, if not the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions 
> (CDPP).
>
>

-- 
Chris Johnson
p 02 6282 1993
m 0401 498 684
e chris.johnson at anu.edu.au