ACT pilots e-health records portal

The ACT Government is trialling a new health information portal designed to deliver personal health information to consumers securely.

Health minister Katy Gallagher launched the 'My eHealth' portal this week with a pilot group of consumers from the Health Care Consumers Association and 40 chronic care patients.

The portal was designed to complement and integrate with the national Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) system.

Patients in the pilot were asked to register for the PCEHR scheme through Medicare separately.

An Accenture-led consortium has been responsible for building core ICT infrastructure for the PCEHR program, developing portals for consumers and healthcare suppliers and integrating PCEHR with State Government systems since August last year.

ACT's My eHealth portal was designed and implemented by New Zealand-based software company, Orion Health, under a contract signed this January.

Minister Gallagher described the portal as "a secure, online service which improves patients' access to their health information, and helps them keep track of their appointments".

The portal was expected to contain limited PCEHR information, including patients' contact details, hospitals and health services appointments, and Canberra Hospital in-patient discharge summaries.

Such information would be recorded on patients' national e-health records by hospitals, general practitioners and other healthcare providers directly.

Gallagher said the trial would allow My eHealth developers to fine-tune the service. She said security was a focus throughout design, configuration, testing and implementation phases.

The State Government hoped that any patient that had presented to an ACT healthcare facility could opt to use the My eHealth portal by July next year.