Demand for mobile access continues to grow
Published 27 February 2018
Consumers demand access to health records anywhere and anytime.
One of the objectives of the My Health Record is to improve consumer access to their health records and promote ongoing engagement in their healthcare. To that end, the National Consumer Portal has been available since 2012 and is the primary method of access for most consumers.
Enriching the user experience for the National Consumer Portal is an ongoing activity within the Agency and, over the last couple of years, significant efforts have been made to enhance the way consumers can access and get value out of their record. This has seen progressive changes to the user interface, most notably in the context of mobile devices such as smartphones.
The value of this investment is evident when you look at the usage level of mobile platforms by consumers. At the beginning of 2017, there were about 18,000 interactions per month with the National Consumer Portal from mobile devices (Android or iOS devices). By January 2018, this number had risen to over 30,000 interactions per month.
Australians are among some of the highest adopters per capita of new technology, using mobile devices more so than other forms of technology. With this level of interaction, it is likely that demand for access to health records anywhere and anytime will continue to increase.
While the Agency will continue to invest in the National Consumer Portal to ensure it supports mobile platforms, this demand provides an opportunity for application developers. The Agency has a program to support app developers wanting to assist consumers who prefer to view their health records on mobile devices, as part of a richer application that also provides access to other data and functions. In the future we will look at other capabilities that meet community demand and expectations.
If you are an app developer who is interested in building health record viewing functionality into your app, please contact our Help Centre on [email protected] or 1300 901 001 to find out more about the opportunity.