E-health Records take a Major Step

Privacy is the major concern in E-health worldwide. Now two recent announcements are blazing a trail towards a solid E-health foundation.

NEHTA, the Australian E-health transition authority, has come up with a privacy blueprint, and on the global scale, a large proportion of America’s key players and global IT firms have also reached a consensus on a privacy framework.

The NEHTA Privacy Blueprint is designed to elicit feedback on the business case that is being presented to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) later this year.

In related news, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States have formed a Tri-Continental Foundation of Experts called Open Health Tools to collaborate on global health IT solutions.

The quote from Skip McGaughey, executive director of OHT, summed up the whole shebang quite well: “Advancements in medical procedures and patient care have changed the way the world views health and wellness. However, modern healthcare information technology has not kept pace with the complexity of today’s healthcare systems. There is a critical need for interoperability between healthcare systems and the consistent and seamless exchange of accurate data.”

Research points to a potential annual savings of $77.8 billion in the United States alone from the introduction of healthcare information exchange and interoperability. Wow!