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In the first episode of HIMSS Australia Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Tim Kelsey, Senior Vice President, HIMSS Analytics International, guest speakers Prof Peter Sprivulis, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Western Australian Department of Health Service, Adj. A/Prof Learne Durrington, Chief Executive Officer, Western Australian Primary Health Alliance, Giles Nunis, Partner, Deloitte Consulting Pty Ltd and Paul Lancaster Alliance Manager, Commvault discussed Western Australia (WA)’s rapid acceleration towards digital health due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and early steps in the WA Health Digital Strategy 2020-2030. KEY LESSONS LEARNT IN DIGITAL HEALTH FROM COVID-19 PANDEMIC “At one level, what (COVID-19) has provided us is a rapid accelerator of our digital strategy. If you look at the important elements of our digital strategy, two of the three principal drivers of the strategy is to improve customer relationship management and increase adoption of telehealth,” said Prof Sprivulis. “What we have seen in terms of our contact tracing solution in Australia, is that contract tracing is really the ‘pointy end’ of customer relationship management when it comes to COVID-19. We went through a very rapid process of implementing a Salesforce-based solution for our contact tracing, which has been quite successful, allowing us to keep tabs on those not only in quarantine, but those who were self-isolating and following up with other contacts to help contain the spread in the community,” he added. Given the large geographical size of WA, COVID-19 saw a very rapid adoption of virtual methods of consultation of WA’s hospital-based outpatient clinics. Rates that were previously in low 10 to 15% rapid moved to the 60 to 80% across a range of clinics and hospitals. Echoing what Prof Sprivulis said, Adj. A/Prof Durrington summed it up in the phrase, “We had ten years of reforms in ten days.” She said that it not only changed about what clinicians thought might be possible using telehealth, it changed the consumer-patient view. “The patient expectation will now also be a driver, so we’ll see a push-pull, rather than a pull-push. General practice and allied health services also rapidly moved to a range of clinical interventions of video and phone. I think the invaluable piece is that we learnt quite a lot of what we do sustain this going forward but the change in practice was dramatic across the continuum of care,” she said. Nunis noted that while there were a lots of positives and quick adoption of virtual methods of care, it has also highlighted the gap areas, such as the vulnerable who may not have access to technology and may not be able to use virtual capabilities beyond their phones. COVID-19 has also shifted the focus away from a clinical setting to a consumer, data driven setting. Lancaster observed that with a lot of digital projects being fast tracked, comes with challenges related to patient identity alignment issues and ensuring that data is kept safe and secure. “Healthcare spending from a data management perspective is definitely on the increase, particularly where the diagnostics and the monitoring of the data and using the data for more analytics for business,” he added. THE TRAJECTORY OF THE WA HEALTH DIGITAL STRATEGY 2020-2030 The WA Health Digital Strategy 2020–2030 sets a vision of how digital innovation and technology will transform health services and the way they will be delivered to the people of Western Australia in the next decade. Prof Sprivulis explained that WA has fairly complex health system – the private sector is mostly funded by the federal government which supports private hospitals and specialist services, allied health and GPs. The state-funded sector offers most of the acute services and range of community services such as child health, mental health, aboriginal health services and rural/remote health services. “These two methods of funding make for some challenges in terms of pursuing of our digital health strategy.” The key outcomes that he expects to see over the next 10 years are ongoing adoption and spread of telehealth as a means of efficiently providing care to WA’s population, as well as improve customer engagement and empower them to be more involved in their care. An important third component is the decentralization of services as part of the digital strategy, away from the large expensive hospitals with a greater focus on disease management in the community, and the digital tools to support that. “The landscape for those digital tools is still fairly immature, and in Australia we don’t have terrific interoperability between GP desk tops and hospital-based systems. With the emergence of My Health Record, we’re seeing greater adoption of standards for the sharing of information. But a significant challenge we will have in implementing this decentralization is how do we overcome some of the financial barriers and come up with a funding model that’s shared between state and federal, that perhaps allows us to move some of our outpatient work from our hospitals, and make better use of services that are closer to an individual’s home, be it involving a GP, private specialist or allied health practitioner,” commented Prof Sprivulis. He noted that clinicians know at an emotional, intellectual level the need to move towards digital, but they may not want to do it at a practical level if it brings about inconvenience. Click here to register for the next episode (Queensland) of the HIMSS Australia Digital Dialogue Series.  

The confirmed contracted scope of initial deployment includes implementing a COVID-19 monitoring dashboard for Miya Precision and roll out of Miya MEMRe.

In the seventh episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series hosted by Dr Charles Alessi, HIMSS Chief Clinical Officer, together with guest speakers Dr Teresa Anderson, Chief Executive, Sydney Local Health District, Dr Zoran Bolevich, Chief Executive, eHealth NSW, Tim Kelsey, Senior Vice President, HIMSS Analytics International and Matt Moran, Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, Philips had a discussion on the lessons learnt from Australia’s handling of the COVID-19. They also spoke about the rising significance of digital health and virtual/remote care in Australia, especially in the preparation to handle upcoming waves of the pandemic. COORDINATED RESPONSES AND COLLABORATION “The leadership we have seen across Australia and New South Wales has been extraordinary. That’s community leadership but also within our own health service. Everyday, we’ve seen our Chief Health Officer for the Commonwealth and the Chief Health Officer for New South Wales communicate with the community at large,” said Dr Anderson. “I think our community can be proud of the fact that listens to those message and that government listens to those messages. I think during this period, what we have seen is a high level of collaboration and camaraderie that I think is something we would like to see going forward and the community saw that. If I think about why we’re doing well (in this pandemic), it’s not because we’ve been doing well for the last four months, it’s because we have a very strong public health system with very strong public health services and units led at a ministry level but integrated across local health districts.” “Having that hub and spoke system puts us in a really good place to be able to respond to a pandemic,” she added. Other than the usual testing, contract tracing tools and management, together with public health measures such as social distancing that were also very much taken by other countries in terms of the pandemic response, Dr Bolevich said that what goes in parallel with that is ramping up hospital capacity and bringing it to the state of preparedness to continue to meet demand and deliver great health outcomes. In both areas of public health measures and readiness of the acute care system, digital tools play a critical role, ranging from getting real time information, ensuring supply chains work well and engaging both the workforce and citizens. Kelsey explained that one of the reasons why Australia has had so much success and in a strong position to manage future waves (of the pandemic) is because it started to think about digital health in a joined-up way some years ago. “Back in 2017, Australia agreed on the first national digital health strategy, which was all of the governments in Australia putting aside some of the federation issues to look at the concept and framework for common data standards, for example and a range of other programs. Of course, the first of those was the My Health Record, which has proved to be very important during the pandemic and indeed, during the bush fire season that preceded it.” REMOTE AND VIRTUAL CARE Dr Anderson commented that while she may had some assumptions about who would accept RPA Virtual, a virtual healthcare and home monitoring tool, she was surprised that both older patients (as well as the young) have really been accepting of such tools and they have embraced it. “72% of the people we have managed in the community, both in their old homes and in the special health accommodations indicated that the wearable devices were easy to use but 89% of them felt that the technology improved their access to care and treatment. So the acceptance rate is much greater,” she explained. RPA Virtual was ramped up by early February 2020 and more than 1,000 patients are successfully managed on the platform. She said that majority (of providers) are providing some form of virtual/remote care and it is not a replacement of face-to-face care, but rather an enhancement and support to that. “The change we have seen over the last four months has been fantastic. The teaming up and embracing of new models of care has been fantastic and we must keep that momentum – we just want to see the continued adoption but also the incentivization of adoption. We should make sure there’s the future-proofing of the health system in case of the pandemic that will come again, we need to be ready for it,” said Moran. KEY TAKEAWAYS “There’s opportunity for health systems to leverage from this crisis both abroad and in Australia to pick up some significant learnings, such as the ethos of agility and working together across traditional boundaries, both professional and governmental and engaging industry in a novel way,” Dr Zolevich summarized. Dr Anderson said: “There’s no doubt that the investment in virtual healthcare is going to continue but we’ve got to do is to make sure that it is integrated into all aspects of our healthcare, not a standalone, not separate but truly integrated. We have to make sure to increase the reach to those people in our community who are most vulnerable.” “When we think about the way people have been safeguarded through appropriate use of digital services (such as telehealth), it makes digital health a very clear and vital priority and it’s a moment that can’t be squandered,” said Kelsey. Click here to register for the final episode of the HIMSS APAC Digital Dialogue Series.

Launched in 2017, Australia-based aeromedical logistics company Swoop Aero announced that it has closed a Series A funding round with returning investors Right Click Capital and Tempus Partners. The startup will use the latest eight figure sum capital injection to establish a presence in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), as well as expand its service offering across the medical logistics space. Swoop Aero says it aims to provide one hundred million people with better access to healthcare by 2025. The funding will also serve to certify its aviation systems for operations over urban areas which will help the business come closer to their goal. Over the past three years, the startup has established operations in five countries through partnerships with global health leaders including UNICEF, UKAid and DFID, impacting over two million people. Most recently, it claimed that they are the first company in the world to remotely pilot commercially used drones from another country, when delivering PPE and critical supplies in Malawi (Southeastern Africa) during the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst piloting the aircraft from Australia. The startup said it has started work with the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand to achieve requisite Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) approvals to transport pathology tests and samples locally via the air. THE LARGER TREND In 2018, the Vanuatu Government awarded Swoop Aero with commercial contracts covering vaccine delivery to health facilities on three of the archipelago’s small isolated islands that are within a 150 kilometre radius of the main island of Efate, Healthcare IT News reported. The Swoop Aero drones are created from commercial off-the-shelf components, as well as company proprietary technology. They feature a carbon-fibre frame and come encased in a 3D-printed shell that is lighter but as sturdy as fibreglass. ON THE RECORD  “As COVID-19 has shown, problems with access to much needed healthcare supplies are consistent across the globe, even in developed countries like Australia, where pathology tests take days to arrive, if they arrive at all. We’re laser focused on further developing our service offering in ANZ and expanding operations so that more people can access vital services. We can’t imagine a future where drone transport isn’t a universally critical component of the health supply chain,” said Eric Peck, CEO and co-founder of Swoop Aero in a statement.

Initial results from a trial of the SRA in Northern NSW has shown significant improvements in communications between healthcare providers.

The hope is that the research will lead to a toolkit of measures and resources for health professionals, tailored for the Australian context, and suitable for national use.

Over a six-week period in April and May this year, Bendigo Health in regional Victoria conducted roughly 2700 telehealth outpatient appointments across the Loddon Mallee region. Compared to a year prior to the six-week period, only 187 telehealth appointments were conducted. The departments that contributed to this huge increase include Oncology (1010 appointments), Child and Acute Mental Health Services (352 appointments), Outpatient Rehabilitation (220 appointments), Speech Pathology (103 appointments) and Midwife Services (78 appointments). As such, Bendigo Health plans to re-evaluate the role of telehealth in its model of care after a huge uptake in the service during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also recently surveyed the telehealth experience of 41 oncology patients and 76% indicated they would like telehealth to be an ongoing option for certain appointments. THE LARGER TREND Given the surge in the popularity of telehealth in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare providers are considering to integrate more of these services in the near future. For example at Singapore’s Tan Tock Seng Hospital, video-consultation sessions starting with the hospital’s psychiatry unit have been implemented to ensure that patients get their care remotely, Healthcare IT News reported. Bendigo Health also rolled out a cloud-based remote monitoring system for suspected COVID-19 patients, which supplies doctors and nurses with a dashboard of daily updated symptoms and health vitals to remotely stay on top of their patients’ health. ON THE RECORD “In the future we do believe there’s a number of appointments that can and should be done virtually for patient conveniences and the efficiency of our service,” said Peter Faulkner, Chief Executive of Bendigo Health.  

This follows the recent launch of the NZ COVID Tracer app. 

The use of DXC Care Suite will increase and improve the flow of patients through the hospitals, freeing up capacity and creating administrative efficiencies.

“Zoom became the primary form of communication and the data cap was increased dramatically,” said Dr Alan Davis, Clinical Director for Northland District Health Board.