Why is Australia Not a Global Exemplar in Telehealth? (Peter Birch)

 

The Australian Government is investing $107.2 million to modernise the health care system, to deliver Australia's Long Term National Health Plan. What do the numbers mean and what is the state of healthcare digitalization and startup opportunities in Australia?

Tune in to the full episode in iTunes or Spotify.

Australia has 25.7 million people. According to official statistics in April 2022, 23.3 million My Health Records are currently on the platform. The idea behind the national healthcare record platform has always been to enable patients to have digital copies of their medical data but also enable fast access to medical information to healthcare professionals. The project hasn’t reached its full potential yet, because an absolute implementation for the end-users is nearly impossible, making records on the platform inconsistent and therefore unreliable.

Putting COVID vaccination certificates on the platform was the first use case, where the platform turned out to be useful on a broader level. Now it’s time for healthcare to find other similar appropriate use cases, says Peter Birch, the creator and host of Talking HealthTech; an Australian podcast and membership community about technology in healthcare. In the past, Pete has been running clinics, and software companies, he is still company Director at MetaOptima, creating intelligent technology to help doctors detect and treat skin cancer. He is also the company Director of the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA), representing the software vendors of the healthcare industry in Australia.

In this episode he talks about:

  • The current state of My Health Record,

  • National plans around healthcare digitalization,

  • Complexity of digitalization in Australia, that has many States, is large and has poor network accessibility in many places,

  • Digital health startup opportunities.

Tune in to the full episode in iTunes or Spotify.

 
Country ProfileTjasa Zajchealthcare IT, healthcare innovations, healthcare technology, Australia, digital healthComment