Introduction
Healthcare Systems all over the world are going under various transformation and innovation because of the substantial challenges systems are facing (Britt et al., 2013). These challenges comprise of several issues which arises due to varying statistics of patients, changing technological facets and the escalating cost of services being provided in the healthcare institutions.
This report throws light over these issues and the proposed solution to it that is ‘My Health Record’. It is an e-healthcare initiative to provide an e-solution in form of My Health Record formerly known as PCHER (Lehnbom, Brien & McLachlan, 2014).
To get a clear understanding of the usefulness of this initiative, the report has been divided into several parts which are my health record analysis, obstacles face by healthcare, capabilities and benefits of E-Health Record.
My Health Record
My health record is an electronic health record system which is an alternative thought of in place of paper documents for all the healthcare system across the globe. This system will keep hold of the summary of a person’s health that will be gathered from previous records and will be accumulated in the present record. This has been thought of to improve the circulation of the information being collected, used, handled, disseminated and shared in Health institutes for far efficient outcomes (Weiskopf&Weng, 2013).
Obstacles being faced
Australia has invested heavily for this initiative. The program has been approved for funding and the Commonwealth Government of Australia is into digitizing the healthcare system (Stephens, 2013). This need was felt for My Healthcare System because of
Demographic changes: the population graphics of Australia is changing is changing with passing time. The capability of a healthcare system in maintaining the wellbeing of ageing population with challenging budget and cost maintenance is becoming an issue. The 21% population of Australia was projected to be aged 65 by 2053 (Stephens, 2013).
Technology Costs: No doubt, technology has enhanced and saved many lives of patients from viral to chronic diseases. Yet, the cost that is required for the management and maintenance of such technology is huge. This in turn would pressurize and burdened the government budget.
Challenges in Medical research: Australia holds a long history in medical breakthroughs. Nevertheless this sector requires more vast and accurate information of various diseases prevalent in Australia. The country lacks such a collection of data which would form a key to various researches.
Equity issues: The Australian population is facing this challenge of non-affluent people being deprived of significant health care while affluent are enjoying it with maximum flexibility. This results in varied outcomes like mortality rate, life expectancy for these divided sects.
Capabilities of ‘My Healthcare Record’
The healthcare record system can overcome several issues being faced now.
- This kind of information system can identify and help in maintaining the patient record, demographics, medication lists, and disease related clinical notes and documents (Raymond et al., 2015).
- ‘My Health Record’ can record external disease related documents along with guidelines, patients personalized care plans, protocols.
- The system can record the doctor’s specific instructions to the patients helping those who are elderly and live alone.
- Notification, reminder and specimen collection information are some other facilities available.
- The privacy of patient can be dealt with entity authentication and authorization along with secure data exchange.
- Researchers may get the data and information related to any disease prevailing for further research.
- All this facilities under one system will ensure good workflow and proper knowledge management.
Benefits of ‘My Healthcare record’
The E-Health Records will surely enhance the quality of care and will reduce the probable medical errors. The healthcare measure will optimize the operational cost elevating the performance of health care organizations. The billing errors and avoidable costs can be overcome (King et al., 2014). This will help the society be at lower risk of epidemics as the government will have complete information an can take steps as early as possible when required. Many clinical are not aware of the appropriate tools which may be beneficial in some cases. This can be enhanced through E-Health records from where information can gather at any time of emergency (Lehnbom, Brien & McLachlan, 2014). The redundancy of performed tests just increases cost which can be avoided through tracking of previous test records. This system will provide enhanced ability to perform researches. Already authentic available data makes it easier to conduct research which gives proper quantitative analysis. This data with EHR can grow and combine to form repository for later surveillance.
Conclusion
Conclusively, it can be deduced that My Health Record is a complex process, yet it can be a helpful and essential tool to digitize the health care system. The system has lots of features and can benefit all range of people from researches to common man. Its Implementation will lead to real time collection of data with distribution and access to many clinical across the globe. This system can prove to be a major digital breakthrough overcoming all the issues currently the healthcares are facing.
References
Britt, H., Miller, G. C., Henderson, J., Bayram, C., Valenti, L., Harrison, C., ...& O'Halloran, J. (2013). General Practice Activity in Australia 2012-13: BEACH: Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (No. 33). Sydney University Press.
King, J., Patel, V., Jamoom, E. W., & Furukawa, M. F. (2014). Clinical benefits of electronic health record use: national findings. Health services research, 49(1pt2), 392-404.
Lehnbom, E. C., Brien, J. E., & McLachlan, A. J. (2014). Knowledge and attitudes regarding the personally controlled electronic health record: an Australian national survey. Internal medicine journal, 44(4), 406-409.
Raymond, L., Paré, G., de Guinea, A. O., Poba-Nzaou, P., Trudel, M. C., Marsan, J., &Micheneau, T. (2015). Improving performance in medical practices through the extended use of electronic medical record systems: a survey of Canadian family physicians. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 15(1), 27.
Stephens, M. (2013). Translation of national environmental management programs by the State of Western Australia, the Commonwealth government, and Perth Region NRM, a citizen group.
Weiskopf, N. G., &Weng, C. (2013). Methods and dimensions of electronic health record data quality assessment: enabling reuse for clinical research. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 20(1), 144-151.
