Imagine a time when any patient, no matter who they are or where they live, can visit their doctor or specialist online and immediately access all the relevant diagnostic information and medical records – a time when a holistic view of a person's health data and outcomes is literally always at their fingertips. Some of this is a reality now, but the system is clunky, incomplete and inefficient. The fact is that the health sector in Australia, in comparison to industries such as banking and commerce, has been slow to adopt digital methodologies. And even when it has, there has been a frustrating lack of connectivity between e-health technologies, confronting clinicians and consumers alike with information silos.
Richard Royle and David Hansen have been closely involved in e-health in Australia for over two decades and are committed to the creation of a digital health system that enables connected care for consumers and health providers across the country. With this goal in mind, in Connected Care: Digital Health in Australia they outline the challenges ahead, and what governments and health providers can do to help build and encourage the uptake of the necessary technology.
Australia needs a properly interconnected healthcare system. This will reduce costs and increase efficiencies in what is currently an overstretched sector—and most importantly, it will save lives. A digital health community that reliably provides connected care will deliver greater wellbeing to everyone.