E-health plan expresses urgency

The National E-Health Transition Authority has highlighted the need for urgent action in its strategic plan for 2009-2012.

The body charged with leading the uptake of the e-health in Australia stressed the need for developing essential foundations, such as individual healthcare identifiers, secure messaging protocols and standardised clinical terminology.

The plan identified medication management and diagnostic imaging as key priority areas for e-health initiatives.

It also said there is a “critical” need to raise awareness about e-health initiatives among key stakeholder groups.

“NEHTA has considered its future work program based on the National Strategy and other important work completed this year including the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission recommendations,” said the organisation’s CEO, Peter Fleming.

“As a result we have produced our Strategic Plan to clearly show our stakeholders across the health sector the directions we are taking to drive the take-up and adoption of e-health.”

Mr Fleming said NEHTA is keen to receive feedback about the plan which it has posted on its website.

Intel Australia’s Healthcare Industry Manager, Dr George Margelis welcomed the plan describing it as a “robust document”.

He acknowledged that NEHTA has experienced a number of challenges in recent years but he stressed the importance of establishing effective governance systems.

“The plan is in line with what NEHTA has been saying in the past nine months, since the new CEO [Peter Fleming] took over,” he said.

“From an industry perspective, we want NEHTA to do the governance once so that we know what we are delivering against, rather than having to repeat the process again. And they have got the governance down pretty well.”

NEHTA will roll out a number of large-scale e-health pilot projects at the end of the year.