New South Wales will lead national collaboration to improve health and well-being outcomes for children using digital technologies and platforms.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) announced on April 24, 2017 that it will work in partnership with eHealth NSW and the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network to establish the National Collaborative Network For Child Health Informatics (the Network).
Strengthening family involvement and facilitating access to care for children
The Network should bring together Australia’s leading experts in children’s health to identify national digital health projects that will have a positive impact on the health and social outcomes of children but also of their families.
ADHA will fund the activities of the Network
ADHA is a statutory authority responsible for improving health outcomes for all Australians through the development of digital healthcare systems. It will fund the activities of the Network.
Patients, families, clinicians, health and social care providers organizations, researchers, jurisdictions and ICT industry partners will be called upon in the coming months to join the Network’s partnership group and the expert reference group.
Health information available in real time
Selected projects will be nationally-focused and child-centred. They will have to:
- Be clinician-friendly and fulfill the criteria of engaging and empowering children and their families;
- Promote access to care for younger people;
- Support integrated care or better coordinated care for children;
- Improve the quality of care via improved decision-making for care providers.
Through this program, health professionals across the country will be able to make use of real-time information about each child’s health status, immunisation status, and interaction across the entire health system.
Encouraging the integration of children’s health data into the My Health Record system
With the press release announcing the establishment of this collaboration, a fact sheet encourages parents to add their children’s health information to the national My Health Record (MyHR) if they have not yet done so.
Adding this data to the MyHR system allows parents to access and share their child’s health information more easily with healthcare caregivers.
Adding children’s health information to the My Health Record will make it easier for parents to access and share information about their children’s health with healthcare providers.
The Record is part of a national system and travels with the child.
Centralized health data to facilitate exchanges between families and caregivers
Families can control at any time what gets uploaded and stored in their child’s file but also who can see the recorded data. These information can include clinical documents added by healthcare providers, such as shared health and hospital discharge summaries, prescription and dispense records, immunizations information, and personal notes written by the parents.
A few days ago, ADHA announced that patients living in New South Wales will now be able to access their pathology results via the My Health Record consumer portal and dedicated mobile apps.
Towards a transparent information flow between digital data systems
Ensuring a transparent flow of information between the different systems to improve access to digital health data for both patients and healthcare providers is one of the main focus areas in the eHealth Strategy for NSW Health 2016-2026.