The following appeared a little while ago in the US.
Academic Freedom Curtailed: Censorship Down Under On EHR's for the Emergency Department?
In a stunning development:
The essay on Emergency Department electronic health record (EHR) problems in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) by medical informatics professor Dr. Jon Patrick, Health Information Technologies Research Laboratory (HITRL), University of Sydney, that I referenced in my posts "The Story of the Deployment of an ED Clinical Information System ‐ Systemic Failure or Bad Luck" and "NSW Nightmare and Overuse of Computers" has been censored. This apparently occurred at the level of the Ministry of Health.
The essay was available as item 6 at http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~hitru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=91&Itemid=146 . Attempts to download now provide a message "This document is not currently available." I do not know if the vendor was involved.
(A copy of vers. 3 of Professor Patrick's report is still available here in PDF; it was a work in progress when it was pulled.)
Complete blog here:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/10/academic-freedom-curtailed-down-under.html
I can’t say I disagree with the poster (Thanks Scot for letting me know about the post)!
It would be nice to have honest academic criticism to be able to be freely discussed and reviewed. Indeed such a freedom is vital in any decent democracy – but this is happening in NSW! Enough said.
David.
Postscript:
As of 10am Sunday 25 Oct Professor Patrick has said he is happy with the way Sydney University is handling a complaint they have received. He also says 'time will tell' if that continues to be the case.
D.
Postscript 2:
File is no longer available from the US - as Prof Patrick has asked it be taken off-line for now.
D.
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