The digital health sector has rapidly changed over the last 15 years creating significant enhancements to healthcare provision. However, until recently, the allied health sector has been forgotten in the development and implementation of digital health tools such as the My Health Record (MHR). While work is occurring to better represent the allied health sector within digital health products and tools, there is considerable work still to be done.
What is Osteopathy Australia advocating for?
We are advocating for equitable allied health access to digital health platforms and for these platforms and tools to be fit for allied health practitioner use and need.
We recommend that the government funds further work conducted by Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA), the CSIRO Sparked program and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) to collectively continue to build and implement allied health consistent terminology data standards.
We also strongly recommend that the Department of Health and Aged Care continues to provide funding for digital health projects and consults with all relevant stakeholders, such as allied health professionals (AHPs) and peak bodies when developing implementation strategies and resources.
It would be beneficial to health consumers, healthcare professionals and software providers if the Department of Health and Aged Care was clearer in publishing My Health Record expectations, timelines and the impact expected from proposed obligations to upload to be eligible for Medicare rebates.
Why this benefits Australians
- My Health Record will become a source of truth containing all health information to assist health consumers working with their health team.
- Better facilitate quality healthcare, safety and continuity of care and movement between practitioners.
- Ensures care provided to health consumers is fully informed.
- Help to reduces the duplication of services, investigations and care as all practitioners are informed of previous care and outcomes.
Policy issues and barriers
- Current digital health products and tools have previously been exclusively designed for medical practitioners resulting in products not being fit for allied health use.
- The great diversity, lack of dominant providers or conformant clinical information systems (CIS) used by allied health practitioners means allied health practitioners are unable to easily view or share information to platforms such as MHR.
- Poor representation and availability of allied health terminology in national terminology data sets used by digital health platforms.
- Previous lack of inclusion means digital maturity and literacy levels may be limited within allied health practitioners.
- Lack of clarity on potential future restrictions and/or obligations placed on practitioners uploading content into My Health Record.