During the recent CeBIT 2016 Conference in Sydney, the Honourable Jillian Skinner, New South Wales Minister for Health, has released the eHealth Strategy for NSW Health 2016 – 2026.
The program envisions to have a digitally-enabled and integrated health system that delivers patient-centred health experiences and quality health outcomes. It outlines the direction that incorporates the latest advances in health technology, policy directives, and ongoing enhancements to performance, quality, and safety in the NSW health system.
Minister Skinner explained that “It’s a ten year program of innovation, investment, and implementation which identifies key short, medium, and long term goals for eHealth NSW.”
“We continue to build a high-speed broadband network, the nbn® of Health we call it, which currently connects 150 hospitals and health centres across NSW including those in rural and remote locations. This enables our clinical and corporate systems to be used in hospitals across the state and in ambulatory care,” remarked Hon. Skinner as quoted by Gizmodo.
According to the NSW Health Minister, the said strategy has been created with significant investment from the Government with the goal of further digitising the statewide health infrastructure systems and deliver various eHealth initiatives.
Building Consistent Foundations is the first horizon that is set in the said strategy. Laid out for the next four years, this aims to mature the NSW Health’s core digital systems, services development, infrastructure, and network standards development to create a consistent and reliable Information and Communication Technology environment in the state.
As part of the eHealth policy, NSW is set to complete the rollout of electronic medical records within the next four years. Data consolidation among NSW health centres is targeted to be completed in the latter part of 2019. Moreover, a framework for statewide health analytics is also being planned for release later this year.
ITnews further quotes MP Skinner, “Clinical analytics is a really important area and eHealth NSW is collaborating with our clinical excellence commission … on a project giving clinicians the information they need to analyse their practices so they can deliver high-quality care.”

“The joint project will set up a capability for clinical analytics, a rapidly developing field that harnesses real-time medical data to generate fact-based diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, to guide work practices, improve clinical outcomes, and ideally, cut costs.”

With the current increase of digital technology and information systems across the NSW healthcare system, the nbn® plays a key role in the success of the eHealth revolution in Australia’s ICT Capital.
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