The Coalition for e-Health had a meeting on Friday. There were some important people speaking including Booz & Co who have been working with the NHHRC, Deloittes who developed the National E-Health Strategy and NEHTA.
The invitation outlined the following agenda:
Introduction.
On the first anniversary of the CeH Consensus Statement on a National eHealth Plan[1] we have the opportunity to reflect on the significant progress that has been made and to participate in the next steps! With announcements over the last week it would appear we are entering a new and positive development phase for eHealth in Australia.
Program
1. Adam Powick, (Deloittes) - The National eHealth Strategy
2. Klaus Boehncke (Booz & Co) - The NHHRC Discussion Paper – E-Health: Enabler for Australia’s health Reform
3. Peter Fleming (NEHTA) - The NEHTA work program
Background documents
1. The National eHealth Strategy – it is understood this report has been approved and will be available from the AHMAC website this week.
2. E-Health: Enabler for Australia’s health Reform http://www.nhhrc.org.au/internet/nhhrc/publishing.nsf/Content/discussion-papers
Time permitting
1. Discussion of an invitation for CeH members to join the Council of AUSchip[2]- a registry of health informaticians and a component of an initiative toward developing a recognised professional health informatics discipline in Australia – Brendan Lovelock, HISA
2. Further discussions on CeH Governance – Brendan Lovelock, HISA
3. Report on definitions around electronic health records – Heather Grain, Standards Australia IT-14
The summary of the National E-Health Strategy is available here:
http://www.nehta.gov.au/component/docman/doc_download/626-national-e-health-strategy-summary-dec08
The slides for the three main presentations are available here:
http://www.ceh.net.au/?q=node/4
By all accounts it was a good CeH meeting, however on browsing these (and the recent NHHRC Interim Report) it becomes pretty clear that either terminological confusion or obfuscation (hard to tell which) abounds around the description of Health Records and Shared Health Records.
We have an absolute plethora of terms (e.g. PHR, IEHR, SEHR, EMR, EHR, Practice Management System (PMS)) and no one really knows who is talking about what and there are a legion of very confused policy makers wondering if anyone has a clue!
As many will be aware there was a US effort to develop a useful set of definitions so we could all be clear as to what was being talked about.
NAHIT Releases HIT Definitions
(5/20/2008) 
The Chicago-based National Alliance for Health Information Technology (Alliance) released its final report, “Defining Key Health Information Technology Terms,” defining six important HIT terms.
The definitions, which will be presented to the Washington-based American Health Information Community (AHIC) on June 3 for final approval, are:
· Electronic Medical Record
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization.
· Electronic Health Record
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff across more than one health care organization.
· Personal Health Record
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual.
Full article is here:
The full report can be downloaded from here:
http://nahit.org/images/pdfs/HITTermsFinalReport_051508.pdf
I looked around the Australian Standards site which is found here:
http://www.e-health.standards.org.au/default.asp
but the document which is being developed, apparently, by Standards Australia and Heather Grain was not in either discussion mode or available as best I could tell.
What I suggest is that all the players (NEHTA, NHHRC, DoHA, Standard Australia etc) get together, agree what they are actually talking about – with precision – and then let the rest of us know what they are actually planning and what they want the rest of use to accept / use.
I don’t care who does it – it just needs to get done so we can move on! The use of all these varying terms by different actors is, to be blunt, just obfuscatory and confusing for all except those who dream up these non-defined terms.
Not too hard guys. Right now it is a total mess – and it should not be! No one knows what anyone is talking about or actually means – just absurd in the real meaning of that word.
At the very least NEHTA and the NHHRC should sort out and agree what exactly they are talking about.
David.
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