Useful Reaction to E-Health Tender in the Financial Review.

Just a brief heads up that the Financial Review has published two articles on the National E-Health Strategy Tender.

They can be found at:

http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080215000020304888&magsection=news-headlines-home&portal=_misnews&title=Too+much+haste+not+good+for+e-health

and

http://www.misaustralia.com/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080214000020301439&magsection=news-headlines-list&portal=_misnews&title=Move+for+better+electronic+health

Your humble blogger is mentioned along with some other e-Health contributors.

The summary is that the need to do the strategy is agreed but that there are some major issues with the approach proposed and the timeframes.

I hope some common sense will prevail. As a colleague often says in the Health Sector “there is no time to do things properly, but always time to do the same thing again”

It would also be very interesting to see the Australian Health Information Council (AHIC) report e-Health Future Directions which is a driver for initiating the tender but has not been made public. Why on earth would that be?

Finally – just why isn’t the Commonwealth Department running this tender and why is the Victorian Preference Policy in place on a national tender?

David.