E-Health to accelerate information, education and take-up of electronic health initiatives by Australian doctors

Australian Medical Association (AMA) President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, announced yesterday that the AMA will host an innovative high-level expert E-Health Forum in Canberra in December to accelerate information, education and take-up of electronic health initiatives by Australian doctors.

Dr Haikerwal said the Forum is a significant milestone in the development of partnerships between the medical profession and industry to progress key issues for e-health into the future.

“This Forum will raise the level of debate on e-health to broader issues that build the foundations for a ‘connected’ health sector,” Dr Haikerwal said.

“Advanced information technology has opened up new frontiers for medical practice – on both the business and clinical sides – but the slow integration of these advances into real life situations could result in missed opportunities for Australian medicine.

“The AMA has been at the forefront of efforts to encourage doctors to adopt the latest technologies, but at the same time we have advised them to only consider initiatives that genuinely work, and which offer real benefits to their practice and to their patients.

“Problems with communication and accessing patient information could be largely eliminated if strategic electronic health initiatives were accessible by doctors in their surgeries and in hospitals. Of course, we need to ensure this is done in a secure environment that ensures integrity of patient information, security of the data, and systems to keep the data up to date and useful.

“Hospitals, GPs and specialists need to be connected electronically so the key people responsible for patient care have access to the right information at the right time in the right place,” Dr Haikerwal said.

Dr Haikerwal said the AMA E-Health Forum will feature presentations by the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, and senior representatives from the medical, public health, consumer, banking, telecommunications, information technology hardware and software, and IT academia sectors, and the Health Department.

“It is vital that we have the politicians, the bureaucrats, the banks, the telcos, and the IT companies all working together with the profession in the formulation and implementation of modern effective electronic systems and programs to power Australian medical practice into the 21st century.

“The AMA E Health Forum will put the e into health - and the winners will be patients, doctors, the community and governments through more effective business and clinical IT solutions in medical practice,” Dr Haikerwal said

The AMA E-Health Forum – sponsored by IBM, the Commonwealth Bank and Cisco Systems - will be held at Old Parliament House, Canberra, on 7-8 December 2005.