Govt tries to prove My Health Record's worth

The federal government has funded 15 testbed projects to investigate new ways of addressing priority health areas using information from the My Health Record.

The Australian Digital Health Agency went looking for projects to fund in May to trial new models of healthcare and enhance consumer participation.

It wants to use the projects to test digital technologies and create evidence of the impact of new services or models of care, drawing on information from the personal e-health record.

A three-month opt-out period for the My Health Record will run from July 16 to October 15, after which the record shifts to an opt-out model.

Health Minister Greg Hunt today announced the first tranche of testbeds that will use “information from a consenting patient’s My Health Record to improve the delivery of their healthcare”.

Each project will receive $600,000 using the “co-operative model of delivery”, and most are restricted to metropolitan areas.

One project will look at increasing patient engagement with community pharmacists after discharge from Melbourne’s Eastern Health to improve medication management.

Other projects will develop mobile apps and digital platforms for patients with cancer, predict the risk of a patient presenting to an emergency department, and accelerate secure messaging work between aged care facilities, GPs and hospitals.

“The projects will connect community pharmacists to information from hospitals to help patients with their medicines in the transition from hospital to home,” Hunt said.

“These connections will allow healthcare providers to provide useful patient-specific information about medicines in the transition period from the hospital to the community.

“We know when patients leave hospital on new medications they can find it confusing knowing how much to take and when.”

The full list of project can be found here.