Making the Change to IT-Based Health

In his editorial for the latest issue of the Medical Journal of Australia, Professor Enrico Coiera applies to Australia the lessons learned through the National Health Service's (NHS) National Program for IT in the United Kingdom.

The National Program for IT (NPfIT) covers 330 acute care hospitals and mental health trusts, and primary and community care organisations across England.

It boasts a central link to a patient register, electronic prescription service, messaging service, web-based booking system for patients, and radiology picture archiving, among other services.

Prof Coiera says that some aspects of the program have been successful but that any undertaking of this size experiences challenges.

"Other nations grappling with health service reform can already learn many lessons from NPfIT," he says.

"With scarce resources, Australia should begin its IT modernisation program with just a few national clinical centres of excellence, where IT skills and efforts can be concentrated.

"With time, successful technologies, processes and work practices, as well as the personnel trained in them, can the migrate to the rest of the health system."

Among the lessons Prof Coiera says have been learned from NpfIT are the need for continual evaluation, and the fact that a skills shortage in the workforce could impede uptake of new systems.

"IT can be a powerful enabler, but if poorly implemented or used it can result in patient harm," says Prof Coiera.

He recommends a patient consent model in which people choose to have their information stored electronically and available to others, rather than a model where this is automatically done and they can choose to opt out.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.

The original article is available at www.mja.com.au.