A week or so ago an EOI appeared from the ADHA. (16 May, 2018
Media release - Digital test beds to drive change in healthcare
Health technology organisations, clinicians, patients and health service managers are driving innovation and developing creative solutions to improve how health services are delivered. These ideas often give life to the next solution, which can improve safety, drive health efficiency, and enable choice and control for patients.
The Australian Digital Health Agency is calling for proposals for innovative test beds that can be rigorously reviewed and then scaled nationally.
These pioneering initiatives will be co-produced by consumers, governments, healthcare providers, and entrepreneurs and will test evidence-based digital empowerment of key health priorities.
Agency CEO Tim Kelsey said digitally enabled models of care are an important priority in Australia's National Digital Health Strategy – Safe, Seamless, and Secure and the test beds demonstrate the Agency’s commitment to work collaboratively with stakeholders.
“Our global peers are increasingly recognising that Australia is in a unique position to test and trial digital health solutions that can be implemented in a diverse and sometimes fragmented system, and have the ability to scale nationally.
“During my time as CEO, I have witnessed some incredible innovations that involve consumers, providers, and healthcare organisations tackling critical priorities such as managing chronic disease in completely new ways. The Agency wants to support these types of initiatives, to assist in their evaluation, and to develop an evidence base of sustainable, scalable initiatives to support further investment,” said Mr Kelsey.
The Agency is seeking expressions of interest that build on areas of high level of digital maturity, with evidence of integrated governance arrangements between the participants. Test beds should involve new approaches to addressing a health challenge rather than pilots that have no plan or capacity to scale across a population.
“These projects will require exemplar regions and sectors with a strong existing capability to deliver outcomes. It is essential to demonstrate feasibility and efficacy for a potential test bed to proceed,” said Mr Kelsey.
MSIA President Emma Hossack has welcomed the Agency’s approach to market.
“Australia’s health software industry has remarkable capability. These test beds will give our members the ability to showcase this capacity in worthwhile settings. Prerequisites of maturity and scalability together with transparent evaluation mean these exemplars will have real value for Australian healthcare,” Ms Hossack said.
Patient and consumer advocate Harry Iles-Mann has had frequent contact with the health system over the past 20 years and welcomes improved digital services to better support patients.
“As more people like me suffer from serious complex chronic health issues, we are reliant on multiple care providers to support our own care management. It’s crucial that we find better ways to provide digitised, highly coordinated health and wellbeing services so that patients can be supported, empowered, and enabled in care and in life,” said Mr Iles-Mann.
Further information
Projects can run for up to four years depending on the test bed however, baseline measures will be required by October 2018, and interim results at 12-18 months. Up to $600,000 is available per test bed.
The Agency has also responded to industry calls to minimise the regulatory burden for respondents, and is requesting submissions of no more than 3-5 pages. The tender closes at 2pm on Wednesday 6 June 2018. Further information available on AusTender.
Here is the link:
On 22 May, the ADHA held an industry briefing and a number of questions were put on notice and the ADHA’s response was published on Wednesday. (30 May, 2018)
In their response the ADHA released details of the six evaluation projects already underway:
1. Evaluating how GPs in primary care use My Health Record to improve their patients’ health through improved medicines management, sharing information, and reducing unnecessary duplication of diagnostic services, this is with the National Prescribing Service (NPS) MedicineWise and the University of Melbourne;
2. Evaluating how GPs and hospitals use My Health Record to improve their patients’ health through improved medicines management, reducing unnecessary duplication of diagnostic services, and reducing hospital admissions and length of stay, this is with PenCS, Western Sydney PHN, the University of Western Sydney, and NSW Health;
3. Educating GPs how to use My Health Record to improve their management of patients’ medicines (specifically deprescribing inappropriate medicines) and reduce unnecessary duplication of diagnostic services, this project is a specific multifaceted education intervention with MedCast and the University of Wollongong;
4. Quarterly tracking of healthcare providers to investigate awareness, readiness, attitudes, and experience regarding the My Health Record system through to early 2019, this is with McNair YellowSquares and Rodika Research Services;
5. Changing clinical behaviour in primary care using My Health Record to improve uploading and viewing of documents, sharing of useful and accurate information, and informed clinical decision making, this project involves the discipline of behavioural economics and is with the Behavioural Insights Team; and
6 Evaluating the performance of the My Health Record system by conducting data analytics on de-identified, administrative, non-clinical My Health Record data to investigate the impact on medicine management, ordering diagnostic services, adherence to evidence based care, patterns
of healthcare utilization, and associated costs.
of healthcare utilization, and associated costs.
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It seems these projects are very limited and focused on showing some clinicians are getting some use out of the myHR. Now we know they exist it will be important to follow up and to understand just what they are finding over I imagine the next 6 months to one year. It will also be interesting to see just how rigorous the studies are in terms of real clinical impact of the myHR, evidence for which since 2012 has been pretty thin on the ground. This is a useful list of things that apparently the ADHA thinks will show positive benefits. Reducing various interventions on a pretty large – and safe - scale will be necessary to make the myHR offer any value for money given all the costs!
I would also hope the actual test-bed projects are projects both maybe to optimize, perfect and make clinically useful the myHR and I would also have thought there would have been some useful myHR free innovation projects that actually have a chance of real success and national adoption. Sadly I fear it’s the myHR or nothing or so it seems whereas I reckon the myHR is already obsolete and it would be better to plan for useful myHR free interventions. We will know when the winners are announced!
Another $3.6M down the drain is likely if the totality focusses on the myHR? One also wonders just how far $600,000 can go in conducting a 1-2 year pilot of a major intervention?
David.
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As a coda I have to say if I was the ADHA I would be hoping someone would come up with a plan and a migration path the render the myHR into something people would be keen to have, would maintain and would be heavily used by clinicians. Dream on David.
D.
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As a coda I have to say if I was the ADHA I would be hoping someone would come up with a plan and a migration path the render the myHR into something people would be keen to have, would maintain and would be heavily used by clinicians. Dream on David.
D.
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