E-health's future being queried

The national e-health record program continues to get support despite coming in for criticism in recent months.

Technology heads in the healthcare sector are supporting it but the Pharmacy Guild of Australia has backed a review of the $1 billion Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system by the new Health Minister, Mr Dutton. (The Coalition’s health policy pledged to undertake a “comprehensive assessment of the true status of the PCEHR implementation”.)

The Australian Doctor recently polled 514 general practitioners with two-thirds indicating they will not take part.

As of last July, more than 612,000 people had registered for an e-health record, according to the National E-Health Transition Authority. Some 4500 organisations had registered in the PCEHR system and almost 4600 shared health summaries had been uploaded by late May.

ADA’s e-health policy states that “safeguards must be employed to protect the privacy of every patient’s e-health records”.