Here is A Blog You Must Read! Eric Browne Nails It Wonderfully!

Eric has nailed it and I plan to develop these themes, and more, next week.

Anatomy of a PCEHR system

2010-December-03 | 16:10 By: eric Filed in: pcehr | policy and politics

Well, two themes dominated the two day e-health summit in Melbourne this week:-

1. Infectious enthusiasm
2. vagueness of the PCEHR

These two themes actually run hand in glove. Both the vagueness of the PCEHR model and the rampant optimism are in large part due to ignorance. There was an endless supply of fresh consumer, bureaucrat and clinician faces, unjaundiced from the attempts to progress e-health both here and overseas over the past 10 or more years. The summit compere, Peter Couchman must have used the words “exciting”, “impressive” and their ilk dozens of times when singing the praises of presenters and presentations. But amongst the delegates, there was also a silent minority of the skeptical knowledgable and experienced.

It is interesting to ponder how much of the vagueness and the enthusiasm was deliberately manufactured for the event and how much was real. If more sits in the latter camp, then things are worse than even I imagined. But there was plenty of the former, due in large part to Mukesh Haikerwal’s formidable skill at harnessing clinician support and painting a picture of the long term benefits from the deployment and adoption of e-health, rather than focussing on the difficulties (impossibility?) of implementing a national PCEHR system of any value by July 2012.

One got the feeling that Mukesh doesn’t much care if the July 2012 goal is not met; that the work will not go to waste, and that it is all about making progress towards the noble vision of a better e-health-enabled world that promises so much. In some respects, I agree with him. I certainly think that the process needs believers and pushers of his standing in order to gain significant amounts of investment. In some respects, it is like the stance of Senator Conroy and the National Broadband Network. Never mind the cost, just look in awe at the benefits!

There is a heap more that is just even better here:

http://blog.healthbase.info/?p=192

We should all be concerned just how poorly Eric sees this. I have to say I think he has also missed some other issues I will explore next week!

Read and realise you are being badly suckered by a rubbish Department of Health. They are utterly clueless. Eric gets it. They don’t!

The "Raving Sycophant" is still saying how wonderful all this is if you bother to look - but why bother?

David.