E-health: change is inevitable

An IT expert says it will be impossible to ignore the benefits of an e-health network under current circumstances.

An information technology expert has advised the aged care sector to put its e-health aspirations on the back burner and adopt a more passive approach until after the election.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s national leader for technology, Adam Powick, spoke about the national e-health strategy and his view on the way forward at the Information Technology in Aged Care (ITAC) conference in Melbourne.

Mr Powick reminded the audience that even though Tony Abbott has said he does not support the scheme, it was he who introduced e-health to the political sphere as a health minister in the Howard government.

Because of this, Mr Powick believes e-health will become popular with both political parties again once the election is over and attention returns to the ‘real issues’.

He said, it was wise “not to move aggressively” on the issue until after the election.

“We will move forward under either government but it will be under a different guise,” Mr Powick said.

He said that the issue of e-health and technological reform in the aged care sector is one that cannot be ignored if the system is to achieve sustainability.

“If we do not do something we will not have a sustainable health care system in this country,” said Mr Powick.

“We have a dangerous cocktail of factors which means we have to deliver health differently in this country.

“This is not a hypothetical. This is real.”

Mr Powick predicted that, in the absence of any real movement on the issue over the next 18 months, providers will implement their own versions of the government’s proposed e-health system, as many have already done,

“Local cohorts of providers are getting together unofficially,” he said.

“They are doing it anyway. [The government] can have total anarchy or they can do it properly for the whole country.”

Mr Powick commented on how disconnected the whole the health care sector in terms of technology and drew specific attention to aged care.

“I’m standing here in 2010 and it’s an absolute disgrace,” he said. “But that’s why we are sitting here today.”

He said the ideal model for information technology within the aged care sector should be driven by market demand and guided by a government imposed framework.

Mr Powick predicted that the e-health evolution will stimulate investment in high priority computer systems and tools.

Tags: aged-care, conference, deloitte, e-health, itac,

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