Chief Medical Adviser Meredith Makeham recently shared her thoughts with Healthcare IT News Australia on how digital health is transforming healthcare with benefits for Australians through My Health Record.

By Steve Renouf. In 1993, I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and it turned out that my four sons have it too, so we all have ongoing treatment for it. Eventually I got involved with Diabetes Australia and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation as their ambassador, which led to advocacy work with the diabetic community. For the last six years, I’ve worked for the Institute of Urban Indigenous Health, which is based in the South East Corner. We started off with four Aboriginal Medical Services and have grown to 18 services. At first I wasn’t sure if I was a good fit, because it’s a Commonwealth Advisory Committee and I don’t have a medical background; I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. But I soon realised it’s important for someone to represent consumers, ensure their best interests are on the table. I see myself as a bridge between them and the medicos.

Words like "disruption" and "transformation" get bandied about a lot these days, along with their more prosaic cousins "change" and "innovation". With Australians now spending more time in front of a screen each day than they do sleeping, we are seeing the shift as consumers choose "digital first" to manage both their personal and professional lives.

Organisations have seen the writing on the wall and are seeking new ways to adapt to this changing environment in pursuit of ever-greater efficiencies and operational effectiveness.

"Cause we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl"^[1]

You know these lyrics. Madonna's single "Material Girl" and its accompanying video were huge hits in 1985, and went on to define much of her career. But was she right? Is she really a material girl? And are we living in a material world? More than 30 years after she sang this song, we find that the world we live in is becoming less and less about material things, and more and more about information.

From the perspective of the national and global economy, information technology is a vast and growing sector that is displacing manufacturing in value and influence. A similar trend is apparent in the economy of our daily lives: financial transactions are routinely conducted electronically, and reliance on the physical tokens of notes and coins starts to seem quaint.

Dr Steve Hambleton, MBBS FAMA FRACGP (Hon) GAICD

Follow Dr Steve on Twitter @SteveJHambleton

Amongst my other roles, I've been a GP at the Kedron Park 7-Day Medical Centre in Brisbane for the past 29 years. Many of my patients have been in my care for a long time and I know them very well but I cannot be there for them every day. Like a lot of GPs who have been in the same practice for a long time, I mainly treat people with chronic and complex disease.

Pictured: Dr Steve Hambleton

I believe one of the responsibilities of General Practitioners is to facilitate patients’ interactions with the health system as a whole, and it’s particularly important for those with chronic ailments. For this reason, I am an early adopter of My Health Record – the secure, online digital summary of a patient’s pertinent medical information, including diagnosis, outcomes, medications, reactions and allergies.

Australia's digital health system is currently developing and evolving to best serve the community's needs, and arguably, people living in the most remote areas of the continent stand to benefit the most. Recently, Tim Kelsey, CEO, Prof Meredith Makeham, Chief Medical Advisor and I travelled to the Northern Territory to meet with a number of stakeholders, among them, Dr Sam Goodwin, the Executive Director of Medical and Clinical Services with the Central Australian Health Service. Having lived and worked in the area for 11 years, Dr Goodwin gives first-hand insights into the challenges faced by remote communities and how digital services can make a significant, positive difference.

Dr Sam Goodwin Executive Director of Medical and Clinical Services with Central Australian Health Service

As the Chief Medical Adviser for the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency), I'm privileged to have the opportunity to meet with many inspiring people – clinicians, health consumers, researchers and innovators who help us think about the way our organisation can best serve Australians to get a good deal out of our investment in digital health services and technologies. We are delivering key services at the Agency that will enable our health system to remain world-leading in its innovation and ability to support a high standard of health and well-being for our citizens. Our continued efforts to improve and expand our understanding of how our services underpin and interrelate to the broader health and care ecosystem depends upon us continually looking outwards, reflecting and learning about future directions for health and care clinical priorities, as well as focussing on striving for internal excellence in our organisation.

The week before Christmas 2016, with temperatures peaking at 43 degrees, I travelled with our CEO, Tim Kelsey and Chief Medical Adviser, Clinical Professor Meredith Makeham to Perth, Bunbury and Busselton in Western Australia.

Dr Monica Trujillo, Chief Clinical Information Officer for the Australian Digital Health Agency, talks about how putting data and technology safely to work for patients, consumers and the healthcare professionals who look after them can help Australians live healthier, happier and more productive li...

In September 2016, I was invited to speak at HISA Queensland’s workshop for Health Data Interoperability, held at Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital.  As the title suggests, the workshop brought together clinicians, technologists and other health informaticians to discuss various approaches to making interoperability within digital health services a reality. Such interoperability is universally recognised as a key component for an effective, user-friendly service.

Driving through the streets of Inala, a south-west Brisbane suburb, is always memorable. The 1950s style brick-and-stucco housing is clear evidence of Inala’s origins as a post-war social housing experiment. Through the decades, disadvantage has continued to dominate the area, populated by the elderly and predominantly African, Middle Eastern and Asian communities – in particular Vietnamese, who were among Australia’s first wave of ‘Boat People’ and made Inala their home. Indigenous art work in the local parks reflect one of Queensland’s largest agglomerations of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Island and Pacific Island peoples.

Watch the National Digital Health Consultation: Findings so far to hear what Australian communities are saying about the future of health and care.

“Can you give me a call when you’re free, love mum.”

The message flashed up on my phone and my heart dropped. I knew something was up. My mum’s attempts at ‘text speak’ usually end up with half a screen of rambled shortcuts that I need to look up urban dictionary to decipher. This, on the other hand, was too short for comfort.

In light of the Australian Digital Health Agency’s commitment to delivering the best possible digital health services to Australia, we recognise the importance of going out and talking to people, hearing their individual health issues and concerns. It’s been one of the most interesting aspects of my job in the Agency’s Communications team.

I am in the school of pharmacy and medical sciences at the University of South Australia in Adelaide looking at the ceiling of Professor Libby Roughead’s office. ‘It used to be lower,’ she says. ‘We had to take out the overhead partition because somebody could have crawled through it’. This is one of the most secure offices in South Australia, perhaps the country. It is where data on the health of Australia’s 250,000 veterans is analysed. When a veteran receives their Gold card they are invited to consent to their medical information being reviewed to ensure they get the best possible care.

What's the collective noun for a group of healthcare providers? A horde? A congregation? Certainly not a gaggle. I think it should be an orchestra – just as an orchestra is made up of distinctive yet harmonious sections, so too is the healthcare industry.

Nine years ago, Fiona’s husband Peter was diagnosed with a brain tumour. It was benign and they were told that it wouldn’t kill him, but would be ‘a bit of a nuisance’. Peter, who worked as a business consultant in Western Australia, went into hospital for surgery – and then their world was shattered. There was a complication after his second operation and Peter, vulnerable to infection, contracted meningitis. He suffered brain damage and has required around-the-clock care ever since. What initially seemed like something Peter and Fiona could live with, now consumes their whole lives.

Here is our first blog post from the Agency CEO Mr Tim Kelsey.

Tim Kelsey, CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency

Everybody in Darwin is hoping for rain: it is heating up and a humid summer is coming. We drive along the foreshore towards Palmerston, past the mangroves that mantle the ocean. I have been invited by Dr Sam Heard to come and listen to patients and staff in his practice, the Palmerston GP Super Clinic. It is a great innovation – a joint venture between Charles Darwin and Flinders universities to give local people access to comprehensive primary care services in one setting, from medical and pharmacy through to podiatry.