Female-Friendly Federal Healthcare Budget
 
 

May 15, 2024

Female-Friendly Federal Healthcare Budget

Australians can look forward to a price-freeze on medicines, 29 new Medicare Urgent Care Centres, 61 walk-in Medicare Mental Health centres and a raft of cancer, HIV and women’s-health measures, as part of a $2.8 billion health package in the 2024 Federal Budget. 

More virtual care and hospital outreach services are also planned to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions — and enable older patients to be discharged sooner into medically supported, safe, comfortable environments. 

 Older Australians will also benefit from an extra 24,100 Home Care Packages, which are intended to reduce wait times to an average of six months and provide greater access to in-home aged care. 

 Other big-ticket items from the Federal Budget include: 

  • More affordable medicines via a price-freeze on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines to beat inflation: $318 million 
  • Life-changing and life-saving medicines added to the PBS, reducing costs to consumers: $3.4 billion 
  • Conversion and expansion of 24 existing Head to Health services into 61 walk-in Medicare Mental Health centres across Australia: $163.9 million 
  • 29 new Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, aimed to reduce waiting time at hospital emergency departments: $227 million 
  • Military veterans’ claims processing is prioritised with an additional $186 million for staffing and $8.4 million to improve case management and cyber security. The Government will also provide $222 million to overhaul legislation covering veterans’ compensation and rehabilitation. It will direct a further $48.4 million to Veterans’ Home Care and Community Nursing programs, and $10.2 million to fund medical treatment for ill and injured veterans waiting for liability claims to be processed. 
  • Free bowel cancer test kits for Australians aged 45-49, allowing them to join the over 50s ($39 million) 
  • New Medicare-benefit-scheme tests, including for suspected heart failure and rare cancers, to reduce waiting times and catch health problems sooner. A skin cancer prevention initiative is also included. ($25.3 million)  
  • Improved preventative health measures such promoting health and fitness, including $132.7 million for grassroots community and school sport to encourage participation. 
  • Spending of $44 million will further Australia’s goal of eliminating HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) transmission by 2030. Federal Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler said Australia aimed to be the first nation to wipe out HIV. 
  • A boost for alcohol treatment and prevention services, better nutrition programs and organisations supporting people with chronic conditions. 
  • $314.5 million in close-the-gap efforts include $164.3m towards First Nations health infrastructure projects, $54.3m towards training up to 500 First Nations health workers, $45m towards boosting renal services, and water infrastructure works.    

Women’s health is prioritised, including funding for breast cancer treatment subsidies, contraception training for practitioners, and development of a virtual contraception decision-making tool. Other initiatives aimed at women’s health include:   

  • Medicare: Longer consultations provided for complex gynaecological conditions like endometriosis, reducing out-of-pocket costs for women. 
  • Menopause Training: $1.2 million for health professionals’ training to manage women’s health during menopause. 
  • Breast cancer: Cutting the cost of a specific treatment from around $100,000 to $31.60. 
  • Funding for research on menopause, pregnancy loss, and fertility: $53.6 million over four years  
  • Miscarriages and sexual/reproductive health: $8 million for developing data sets 
  • Enhanced antenatal and postnatal care, including mental health screening: $56.5 million over four years 
  • Miscarriage: public awareness program, with support for affected women and families 
  • First Nations Women’s Health: Investments in prevention work for preterm births, stillbirth action plan, and free period products for First Nations communities. 

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Breaking the Silence on Heavy Periods
 
 

May 10, 2024

Breaking the Silence on Heavy Periods

For many women, dealing with excessive menstrual bleeding is an unspoken struggle, often endured because it has been misunderstood as ‘normal’.

The inaugural International Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Day on May 11 aims to change that narrative.

This movement, propelled by shared experiences and expert insights, seeks to shed light on the challenges faced by women worldwide and encourage open conversations about heavy periods.

Some research has found that the issue affects one in four women.

Heavy menstrual bleeding isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it can significantly impact quality of life.

“It’s disabling,” said one 53-year-old lived-experience contributor to the campaign.

“On some heavy bleeding days, I could not leave the house.

“I became anaemic, which carries further health risks,” she said.

“But we do not have to suffer. Do not hesitate to see your doctor – treatment is available.”

More than half of women who experience heavy periods have not discussed treatment options with a healthcare professional, found a recent survey by marketing research company Two Blind Mice for medical technology company Hologic.

The survey also found that women experiencing excessive menstrual bleeding felt embarrassment and shame, which hindered help-seeking.

Doctors warn that heavy bleeding may be a sign of a medical condition.

Obstetrician and gynaecologist and campaign spokesperson Talat Uppal emphasises the importance of assessing whether heavy periods disrupt daily activities, rather than solely focusing on the amount of blood loss.

“”If a woman’s period is resulting in a compromised quality of life, then it’s heavy menstrual bleeding,” she said.

Treatment options for heavy menstrual bleeding are available and varied.

Reluctance to address the issue can delay access to timely care.

Dr Uppal stresses the need for more awareness and open conversations to empower women to take control of their reproductive health.

International Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Day’s – online event

Join Bleed Better tomorrow, May 11th at 10 am AEST for an online event featuring guest speakers who will raise awareness, offer management insights, and advocate for a shift in attitudes towards heavy menstrual bleeding. Register here: https://www.bleedbetter.org/ihmb-online-event

Further reading:

Bleed Better

Wear White Again

Heavy Menstrual Bleeding Clinical Care Standard

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What to consider when selecting a practice management system?

February 20, 2024

What to consider when selecting a practice management system?

View our Clinical Software Selection checklist here!

Looking for a new system to manage your practice, clinical notes, and patient records? What should you be looking for in a software solution?  

Delve into the following factors to consider when seeking a healthcare practice management system. These insights come from conversations with our customers, decades in digital health, and personal experience as healthcare consumers.

1. System architecture

When navigating PMS options, one of the first crucial decisions is whether to opt for a server-based or cloud-based system. Evaluate the long-term costs, encompassing initial setup, subscriptions, IT support, and maintenance. It’s important to tailor your choice to your practice’s model of care, whether it’s virtual care/telehealth, bricks-and-mortar, or a hybrid approach.

Read our article, “Eight Reasons to Embrace Cloud Technology in Healthcare” to learn how cloud technology can help in substantial cost savings, potentially saving your practice $600k in 10 years.

2. Feature requirements

To maximise the efficiency of your healthcare delivery, it’s essential to define specific feature requirements tailored to your practice. From appointment booking to electronic health records and billing, identify key elements such as ePrescribing, Medicare billing & claiming, online booking, My Health Record integration, secure messaging, patient portal functionality, investigation requests, and robust reporting capabilities.

3. Training and support

A successful integration of a PMS into your healthcare setting relies heavily on the training and support provided by the vendor. It’s important to enquire about the level of training and ongoing support offered by the PMS vendor, and to assess the available support mechanisms for addressing any day-to-day operational issues.

4. Evaluate other key aspects –

Other important factors to consider include the following:

  • Ease of use: Ensure the system is user-friendly, promoting an efficient workflow within your team.
  • Mobile accessibility: Verify if the PMS allows remote access, facilitating flexibility and on-the-go management.
  • Interoperability: Confirm the system seamlessly integrates with other healthcare systems, promoting efficient information exchange.
  • Security and compliance: Ensure the PMS adheres to necessary regulations to safeguard patient data, maintaining the highest standards of security.

The truth is every practice has slightly different needs and workflows so no practice/patient management system will be a perfect fit. Each will have strengths and weaknesses and potentially require compromise to accommodate your team’s unique requirements. Finding a flexible, robust system that can tick most of the boxes, now and tomorrow, suggests you’re on the right track.

Contact our Sales team today to discuss how MediRecords cloud-based software can help you. 

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    What’s happening in health?
     
     

    February 8, 2024

    What’s happening in health?

    January has skedaddled and February is upon us. In Australia, that means the kids are back at school, the trains are crowded again, and things are getting serious at work. In the interest of getting you up to speed, here’s a selection of recent happenings in health and healthcare across the globe.

    Some come from the frontlines of technology, while others show human connections are increasingly important:

    As we enter a newish year, here’s what kept hospital CEO’s up at night in 2023. Do any of these resonate with you?

    While we’re on the topic of nightmares, the WHO predicts a 75% increase in global cancer rates over the next 26 years, due to smoking, alcohol use, obesity, ageing and other factors.

    Based on that prediction, it’s important that mRNA technology trials have begun with human subjects in the UK. The trial aims to see if introducing cancer ‘markers’ to people can jump-start an additional immune response and boosts their fight against melanoma, lung cancer and other solid tumours – a bit like summoning an extra battalion of internal cancer fighters. It’s early days, but another step toward personalised cancer treatments.

    In Australia, government data shows Federal Budget initiatives aimed at increasing bulk billing for medical appointments have had an impact, with rural regions the main beneficiaries.

    Scientists have suggested the appendix might not be as expendable, or useless, as generally perceived, and has a hidden role in gut health.

    Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Neuralink venture says it has put a wireless brain chip in a human. Details are sketchy but Neuralink has previously stated a goal to assist people experiencing paralysis.

    Have you heard of orthosomnia? It is a term for the obsessive quest for perfect sleep. A just-published survey found sleep-medicine doctors viewed the sleep-tracking devices that some of us are wearing on our wrists to bed as a contributor to orthosomnia and misperceptions about sleep. Clinically, consumer sleep technology was “neither helpful nor unhelpful”.

    The jury is still out on mental-health apps, particularly those reliant on chatbots.

    Speaking of mental health, Sesame Street’s Elmo asked the Internet how people were doing and triggered an avalanche of more than 9000 responses from people struggling with mood and mental health. The take-home lesson is the need for regular wellbeing check-ins is real.

    Please let us know if anything else has caught your eye. We aim to keep a finger on the pulse throughout 2024.

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      Federal Government’s digital-health plan puts people first
       

      January 18, 2024

      Federal Government’s digital-health plan puts people first

      The Federal Government has launched its 10-year blueprint for digital health investments and initiatives, with a key focus on encouraging Australians to trust in data and enable its innovative use in healthcare. 

      The much-anticipated blueprint envisions an efficient, person-centred healthcare system underpinned by secure, interoperable data, and responsiveness to emerging technologies.

      Digitally enabled collaboration between hospitals, primary care and community providers, including allied health, will ensure information follows patients through the system, the report said.

      The Digital Health Blueprint 2023-2033 is accompanied by an Action Plan establishing broad strategies for the coming decade.

      The central aim of the blueprint is convenience for consumers whose healthcare journeys will be supported by multidisciplinary teams providing coordinated care. These teams will deliver services underpinned by digital-health technology that enables consumers to make informed decisions about their care.

      While eyebrows were raised at the timing of the release of such an important planning document, three days before Christmas, the arrival of the national strategy was welcomed by the Medical Technology Association of Australia (MTAA).

      The blueprint states: “Trusted, timely and accessible use of digital and data underpins a personalised and connected health and wellbeing experience for all Australians.”

      The action plan sets out a range of initiatives either already started, ongoing or at planning stage. “While each initiative calls upon specific delivery partners, the health software industry should be recognised for its key role in realising many of these,” it says.

      The Initiatives include:

      • Allied health providers to connect to a beefed-up My Health Record, “building on adoption within general practice and medical specialists”
      • Strengthening and expanding ePrescribing, including to public hospitals
      • Real-time prescription monitoring
      • Electronic medication charts 
      • Establishing a core national standard — Sparked – Core FHIR standards — for consistent patient health interaction information capture (MediRecords is an active participant in the Sparked community)
      • “Digitally empowering” Australia’s healthcare workforce
      • Establishing a national eRequesting capability for pathology and diagnostic imaging health services, facilitating electronic clinical-decision support
      • National health-information exchange capabilities, requiring agreement between states and territories
      • Broadening the range of assistive technologies available for seniors living independently.

      MediRecords is uniquely capable of supporting the digital health initiatives. The MediRecords  Care platform is designed for use by multidisciplinary teams and for data interoperability. Featuring FHIR and API connectivity, MediRecords is working on a major national project for data sharing across the healthcare spectrum of patients, GPs, allied health providers, specialists and hospitals.

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        Keeping it real: Artificial Intelligence to dominate digital health-tech in 2024

        January 11, 2024

        Keeping it real: Artificial Intelligence to dominate digital health-tech in 2024

        Twelve months ago, MediRecords made eight predictions about health-tech trends to watch in 2023. While we weren’t too far off the mark, it’s fair to say some of these emerging trends are still, well, trending. Nonetheless, as we welcome 2024, it’s time to look forward again.

         

        Any health-tech pundit will have two words for you in 2024: Artificial Intelligence. This is because the AI genie is out of the bottle. The race is on to use this nascent technology in healthcare so that it is safe, secure, accurate, and unbiased. Here are some of the ways AI is being deployed — or will be:

        Smart notes: Using AI assistants to translate consultations into clinical notes should mean less administration and more time for person-centred care. This doesn’t mean the AI is diagnostic, just smart enough to summarise a conversation into pertinent points, after listening to a telehealth or in-person appointment

        Data-driven decisions: No two patients are exactly the same but algorithms can detect patterns across thousands of previous cases and predict the statistically most likely path forward. This will be the basis for health coaching, chronic disease and other illness management programs, hopefully providing timely information at ‘teachable’ moments that can alter and optimise patient outcomes.

        Handy insights: Your handheld device or wearable is likely to know things about you before anyone else. How hard you tap the screen, your vocabulary, tone of voice, gait, facial expression, skin tone, heart rate, respiration, perspiration and oxygen saturation are signposts to your mental and physical health. Combining these data points will enable earlier interventions. Imagine how powerful this could be for triggering a call to a clinician or counsellor when a patient needs help or reminding someone to take their medication.

        Getting under your skin: A drop of blood, a lick of saliva and other bodily fluid samples can help you find long lost relatives but also medications that work better for you and foods that make the orchestra in your gut microbiome play in tune. Consumer kits for quicker insights into fertility, fitness, faeces and more, will become readily available.

        Coming to your sensors: Data will be harvested from sources including your phone camera, your clothing (See This AI-Powered Sock Could Revolutionize the Care of People With Dementia | Tech Times) and even your toilet (See This Futuristic Toilet Sensor Reads Your Pee to Measure Health – CNET). If it can be measured, it will be.

        Next available: As competition for healthcare-consumer dollars increases, buyer power is boosted. Consumers will expect Uber-style technology to find the next available appointment and have their results and medications delivered, pronto. If funding and regulatory hurdles can be leaped, healthcare could potentially be delivered globally.

        Ch-ch-ch-changes

        Speaking of regulations, there’s much anticipation associated with the Federal Government’s recently released Digital Health Blueprint for the next decade; see:

        The Digital Health Blueprint and Action Plan 2023–2033 | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care). A key commitment is that personal health data is available and interoperable – in other words useable — wherever you need care. MediRecords is actively involved in the Sparked community developing core national standards for FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources). We look forward to Federal incentives for adherence to new industry-wide data models so that healthcare organisations can seamlessly share information.

        Looking within

        The acclaimed US science-fiction author Ray Bradbury had the following to say about predicting the future: “Predicting the future is much too easy… You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.”

        This sentiment is central to MediRecords’ digital health wish list for 2024. We understand the job is never finished. Health tech can never stop striving to do things better, smarter and safer. MediRecords is building next-generation, cloud-connected healthcare. We can confidently predict we’ll be sharing major new product enhancements in coming months.

        About MediRecords

        MediRecords is Australia’s leading cloud electronic health record and patient management system. MediRecords is used by clinicians providing outpatient and inpatient care in community health, Defence, hospitals, emergency medicine, industry, universities, and telemedicine.

        References

        “Tremendous emerging demand”: The security and data challenge in Australian healthcare – Cloud – Digital – Security – CRN Australia

        AI May Be on Its Way to Your Doctor’s Office, But It’s Not Ready to See Patients – KFF Health News

        Amazon Health Launches New Initiative To Address Chronic Conditions (forbes.com)

        Cardiology has embraced AI more than most other specialties (cardiovascularbusiness.com)

        Health technology in 2024: Projections for AI, digital health, and more (chiefhealthcareexecutive.com)

        Use Technology to Support Your Clinicians | HealthLeaders Media

        Why Providence had to ‘blow up’ the old way of providing care with virtual nursing (beckershospitalreview.com)

        https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/addiction-recovery-provider-sees-success-ai-enabled-telehealth-meds-monitoring

        https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/disruptors/google-says-medical-ai-tool-is-performing-at-an-expert-level.html

        https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/digital-health/new-apple-headset-coming-in-february-could-be-used-by-hospitals.html

        https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/innovation/a-recipe-for-magic-how-baptist-health-is-infusing-ai-into-all-levels-of-care.html

        https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/mayo-clinic-inks-multimillion-dollar-deal-with-ai-startup.html

        https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/telehealth/is-virtual-nursing-overstated.html

        https://www.pulseit.news/australian-digital-health/ifhima-2023-digital-health-adoption-in-primary-care-and-the-covid-effect/

        https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-ai-powered-clinical-notes-api-could-boost-telehealth

        https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/why-ai-will-never-eliminate-need-pharmacists

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          Email on Demand is now live on MediRecords
           

          November 30, 2023

          Email on Demand is now live on MediRecords!

          Enhance your communication workflow with Email on Demand –
          MediRecords' latest feature!

          We are excited to share that Email on Demand is now live on the MediRecords platform! This new feature allows our users to send emails directly from MediRecords, removing the need to download files or switch between applications. By using our new email solution, users can streamline their communications, save resources, and have more time for patient-focused care.

          Users can now access Email on Demand from the Universal Communications Bar, which is located at the top right-hand corner of the MediRecords platform. When users click on the email icon, they will see a pop-up window where they can compose and send an email. Users can also attach documents from MediRecords files or from their local device.

          When using Email on Demand within a patient record, users can simply tick the checkbox to Select Current Patient, and the Recipient and Regarding fields will be automatically filled with the applicable details.

          Email on Demand is a useful feature that helps to optimise workflows and efficiency with benefits including:

          • Emailing clinic rosters and staff updates to internal practice users
          • Sending attachments to patients such as a Health Summary, Care Plan, prescriptions, medical certificates, and education resources.
          • Sending multiple document attachments to external healthcare professionals, regarding a specific patient.

          If you would like to read more on how to use Email on Demand, please visit the following articles from our Knowledge Base:

          Interested in exploring Email on Demand further? Book a demo with our Sales team, and discover how Email on Demand can help to optimise your practice’s communications.

          Play Video

          Frequently asked questions

          Any document created as a New Letter or Imported into the Correspondence OUT grid will be available to be attached, provided that the letter status is Final. This means Investigation Requests, Invoices, Patient Education, and more, can be sent via email after being uploaded to the Patient’s Correspondence.

          While you won’t be able to receive a direct reply into MediRecords, you can include Reply-to instructions in the body of your email. All emails will come from a clear no-reply email address with an embedded footer that also indicates the inability to receive replies.

          Yes, you can send as many emails as you like, however you will be unable to include multiple recipients on one email at this stage.

          To keep your email safe and secure, the recipient’s email address must be confirmed and saved within a Patient Record or Contact.

          As with most email servers, a failure to deliver can take a long time and is not always immediately apparent. While you won’t be able to see a delivery status within MediRecords, if you’re concerned your email has not reached its destination, please speak to our Support team.

          A sent email will be logged as a Task in the Activities screen, and within the Patient’s Activities tab. This entry will include comprehensive details of the email, including all recipient and patient information, and even whether a file was attached or not, to provide peace of mind that your email went to the right place, and that you didn’t forget to attach that document.

          MediRecords utilises SMTP Port 587, as do many other major industry mail clients, such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail. This is highly secure, encrypted and reliable, with additional layers of security compared to other ports.

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            Investigations: Improvements & new features
             

            November 27, 2023

            Product Update

            Investigations: Improvements & new features

            How MediRecords is introducing smart new ways to manage Investigations requests and results.

            In MediRecords, ‘Investigations’ comprise the pathology and radiology Requests and Results that are housed within a Patient Clinical File.

            Once a patient has completed a test or scan, if the MediRecords practice is using Secure Messaging, results are sent direct to the MediRecords Inbox where clinicians can review the contents, create any follow-up recall activities, and link these to the Patient Clinical File. Alternatively, the practice may choose to manually upload results via the Inbox or the Patient Result Grid.

            MediRecords has recently updated the Investigations feature with new features to make workflows more efficient and convenient. Here are some of the benefits our users will enjoy thanks to improvements across Investigations:

            Save time and hassle: Easily renew a request by duplicating a prior request with the same details. These pre-filled referrals are beneficial for monitoring chronic conditions and for recurring tests. For example, suppose a patient needs a blood test every three months to check their cholesterol level. In that case, the clinician can simply renew the previous request and send it to the pathology provider without having to fill most of the details again.

            Keep track of patients’ results: Users can now link a Patient Result to the original Request from within the Patient Result Grid, to allow an end-to-end workflow for manual and/or paper results. This new feature enables users to close the loop for manual results by allowing them to connect two items and then update the Status of the original Request to Partially or Fully Received, with a couple of clicks. For example, if a patient has completed a chest x-ray to diagnose possible pneumonia, the clinician can easily link the Result to the Request from the Patient Result Grid, then update the Status of the Request to indicate that the Results have been received and reviewed

            Work at your own pace: Create a draft request and save it for later. This allows clinicians to add information or make changes. before marking a Request as outstanding. This becomes particularly useful when a patient may require a radiology test or scan, but pathology tests need to be completed prior. The clinician can create a draft Request and save it in the patient’s record. They can then edit the Request later to add more details (e.g. outcome of pathology results).

            Customise workflows & allocate new levels of priority: Our new priority fields provide more options on the level of urgency (e.g., routine, urgent, ASAP, STAT) of a request. We have also added new filters to help sort and search for patient requests and results.

            If you would like step-by-step instructions on using Investigations, please visit the following articles from our Knowledge Base.

            If you would like to book a demo, please contact our Sales team by clicking the button below.

            Book a demo

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              Rural Mental Health Conference 2023: Insights from MediRecords

              November 10, 2023

              Rural Mental Health Conference 2023: Insights from MediRecords

              Peer-support workers are the future of mental-health service provision, including in rural Australia, where the need is among the highest and access to services among the lowest, the Rural Mental Health Conference was told this week.

              Also, the conference heard that talking openly about mental ill health and suicide is essential to reduce stigma, increase understanding and activate prevention initiatives in communities.

              MediRecords was an industry sponsor for the conference in Albury, which was attended by mental health professionals, researchers, advocates and others.

              Conference co-chair Professor Russell Roberts, of Charles Sturt University and the Manna Institute, opened the conference by dispelling the oft-made claim that rural towns were dying. In fact, they have been growing for 20 years, boosted further by an increase in relocation to rural Australia during the pandemic, he said.

              Speakers highlighted workforce challenges including recruitment and retention, and low mental-health literacy, compounded by the housing crisis for people willing to move and live rurally.

              “Peer support workers are the future of mental-health service provision,” said

              Dr Chris Maylea, Associate Professor of Law at La Trobe University.

              Also, he argued that inadequate mental-health services for rural Australians was a breach of human rights.

              “Sub-par services because someone lives in a rural area – we should call that a human-rights violation, not a geographic disparity.”

              Mental Health Australia CEO Carolyn Nikoloski called for a national human-rights act – one that embedded mental health into human rights.

              Other themes from the conference included:

              • A dearth of mental health services in rural areas means people with mental ill health end up in the justice system. As the documentary film Solstice stated, people in urgent need of mental health care don’t get a helicopter flight to Melbourne like accident victims; the more likely options are a busy hospital Emergency Department or police custody.
              • Telehealth is increasingly essential for providing access to services where few or none are available locally and wait lists are long. The Royal Far West Centre for Rural and Remote Children’s Health gave an example of setting up a farmer with video-call technology so he could join a case conference for his daughter from his tractor. Clean Slate Clinic clinical nurse consultant Fiona Faulkner said the home treatment program enabled people in rural areas to seek support without the fear of being ‘outed’ in their small communities.
              • Kelly McGrath, of the Wesley Research Institute, highlighted the way that services need to adapt telehealth to support individuals, ensuring there is personalised tech help and financial support, and sensitivity to how and where people engage with telehealth – from having kids running around in the background or access at the workplace, where there may be insufficient privacy.
              •  Ruralaid is experiencing a significant spike in demand for its services in Queensland, where farmers have been confronted with floods, bushfires, rising costs and falling returns for produce.

              MediRecords is a cloud-hosted electronic health record and client management platform with industry-leading options for secure data sharing. MediRecords supports a broad range of telehealth care providers, including the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department.

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                Innovative solutions: Transforming patient care with next-gen AI

                November 7, 2023

                Innovative solutions: Transforming patient care with next-gen AI

                Using generative AI for almost-instant, accurate clinical notes is rapidly gaining momentum, with smart solutions emerging in Australia and globally.

                And telehealth may be one place this tech shines brightest.

                The fever-pitch buzz around generative AI in healthcare is not surprising, since it was valued at more than $1 billion last year, and poised to reach $22 billion by 2023.

                Documentation burden

                “With clinicians overloaded and staff shortages worsening, improving clinical documentation, workflow and optimisation of electronic medical records is more critical than ever,” as Dr Simon Wallace wrote in The Medical Republic this year.

                A survey last year of 1,000 UK doctors, nurses and allied health professionals revealed they spent an average of 13.5 hours per week generating documentation, up 25% in the last seven years.

                Here and now

                A team of Aussie doctors, designers and engineers at Heidi Health aims to “give healthcare providers superpowers” with their generative-AI clinical-notes tool. It records and transcribes consults, then transforms them into “whatever you need next — specific forms, patient explainers — or something else, just ask Heidi”.

                Being present

                Dr Shiv Rao, a US cardiologist and CEO of a Abridge, a vendor of generative-AI clinical documentation tech, told Healthcare IT News: “ … [Turning patient conversation into highly professional notes with quality and accuracy … [means] that we could refocus our profession on what matters most – being present and listening.”

                “We could all but eliminate the administrative load that has eroded the quality of doctor-patient conversations and has famously broken the spirit of many clinicians,” he said.

                The power of more than one

                Solutions that pair AI with existing tech are booming. For example, APIs have been developed to seamlessly integrate SOAP notes and other clinical notes into workflows and virtual-care platforms.

                Telehealth was fertile ground for AI, according to Kwindla Hultman Kramer, CEO at AI-video-audio specialist company Daily.

                “All audio is already being captured digitally, ready for transcription and summarisation. This makes telemedicine a good starting point for adding new AI tools into healthcare workflows,” he told Healthcare IT News.

                Safety first

                While it is acknowledged that generative AI in healthcare will have to address concerns about whether tools are safe, equitable and adhere to privacy requirements, internationally, countries are co-operating to create a safer future with AI.

                In November, Australia, and 27 countries including the EU, US, UK, and China, signed the Bletchley Declaration. This agreement encourages the safe, ethical, and responsible development of AI, focusing on human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible usage.

                The federal Minister for Industry and Science, Ed Husic, said while there is immense potential for AI to do a lot of good in the world, “there are real and understandable concerns with how this technology could impact our world”. 

                “We need to act now to make sure safety and ethics are in-built. Not a bolt-on feature down the track,” he said.

                MediRecords is an electronic health record and patient management system platform well suited for enabling and underpinning innovative new technology, including AI tools.

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