Last week Dr Andy Bond - Chief Architect of NEHTA gave a talk entitled “E-health realising improvements in the safety and quality of healthcare delivery” to the Human Factors in Healthcare Symposium that was run a few days ago (March 3-4, 2009).
See:
http://www.informa.com.au/conferences/healthcare/human-factors-in-healthcare-symposium
The slides – as offered on the NEHTA site – are really a ‘dog’s breakfast’ and fail NEHTA’s usually high presentation standards rather badly (Text missing, horrible fonts etc).
The whole presentation can be found here:
http://www.nehta.gov.au/component/docman/doc_download/660-human-factors-in-health-care
As always, however, there was a little buried gem.
Technical Architects from all countries just love ‘big picture’ explanations of what they are about.
NEHTA has created an absolute ripper! (click on image to enlarge). Note: You do really need to take time to look closely at all the areas that are covered and how they are arranged.
What we see here is really astonishing.
NEHTA, if this image is to be believed, planning to do (or facilitate) the ‘lot’. By this I mean bring together a conceptually complete e-Health solution for Australia
Look closely and you see.
1. Reasonably sensible suggestions regarding e-Health governance
2. A broad range of relevant applications and solutions and even change management etc
3. An outline of the needed messaging and information flows.
4. An data and information standards section.
5. Recognition of the key feeder systems and so on.
6. Recognition of the needs for security and privacy management.
(Note much of this maps quite well to the Deloittes plan)
Here is their representation – which is a little less detailed but quite similar overall. (click on image to enlarge).
None of this waffly “interoperation framework” nonsense – this is a real planned and seemingly carefully considered overview map. Additionally the map does not look all that far off the mark! Only question is – is it real?
All this is way beyond its present mandate – to say the least.
So what is going on? There are really only two possibilities I can see.
One is that this is a genuine fantasy and wish fulfilment picture that was doodled together by the architects when they were bored. No one is going to do this – but it is a great picture
The second is that this is what NEHTA is planning to do.
If the second – as one might hope – they clearly have a few billion dollar, ten year project in mind as this is a real monster no matter how one looks at it – and the work to get there is just enormous.
This really is the vision thing – but I wonder is this for show or for real. Canada has quite a similar document – called the Blueprint. This can be accessed by registering here:
http://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/lang-en/working-with-ehr/knowledgeway
They are actually doing it as I type. ($1.5 billion already spent and more coming)
Right now we have no dollars and little else other than NEHTA – who seems not to want to be direct on what its plans are.
Nice to have a picture of how it might be. Not perfect – but by no means bad! It would be fascinating to hear from NEHTA how they plan to turn this picture into actual operational systems and real clinical outcomes. We wait and watch. This picture talks the talk now we need NEHTA to actually, successfully walk the walk!
Also I wonder will someone fund it?
David.
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