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The company will be highlighting its new Edison platform, AI algorithms built into medical devices as well as diagnostics and therapeutics for precision medicine.

Australia’s healthcare industry and government stakeholders need to focus on four key areas – technology development, regulation, investment and implementation – to stimulate a thriving digital health industry. A report released by digital business health accelerator ANDHealth, Digital Health: Creating a New Growth Industry for Australia, outlined these as next steps needed to create a cohesive and collaborative digital health industry. ANDHealth CEO Bronwyn Le Grice said that with the global digital health market expected to reach US$206 billion by 2020, driven by the mobile and wireless health market, Australia needs to pursue innovation in technology, such as AI, immersive simulation, big data and IoT. And in order to fully realise the industry’s full potential, there needs to be in place an integrated ecosystem that supports the growth and establishment of the industry. The report highlighted the significant investment to date by all levels of government in developing core components of the national health and health technology infrastructure, including supply chain interoperability, terminology standards, health identifiers and data repositories, such as the My Health Record system. But it identified that for fit-for-purpose regulation, reimbursement and procurement practices and supportive public policies, strong infrastructure is needed to contribute to a viable platform for digital health technology commercialisation and implementation. “Australia is ready to take the next step in creating a cohesive and collaborative digital health industry. Australia is considered a global leader in health and medical research. We’re also early adopters of new technology and have an abundance of innovative ideas,” Le Grice said. “These are the key ingredients needed to nurture commercially viable and resilient fast-growth companies in emerging sectors, like digital health. “However, in order to succeed, there needs to be widespread understanding that the digital health sector goes beyond health information technology and infrastructure, and that digital health is not a subset of the medical devices sector,” she said. [Read more: A futurist predicts what healthcare will look like in the late 2020s | What’s needed to drive innovation and improve affordability in healthcare?] The report also recommended six steps for the healthcare industry: Recognise that digital health is a sector, which sits alongside traditional bio-pharmaceutical/life sciences and medical devices, and is a key driver of both health and economic outcomes for Australia in the future. Support and incentivise industry-led innovation support programs to provide innovators with access to professionals and advisors with demonstrable track records of success throughout the commercialisation pathway. Address challenges relating to access to capital to retain equity and foster company growth within Australia until later in the company lifecycle. Leverage investment in national infrastructure and facilitate access to it for innovators, technology developers and growth companies, in a structured way. Act to implement necessary changes to the broader healthcare environment, specifically with respect to regulation, reimbursement and procurement. Recognise the need for specialised expertise to support digital health companies to develop their international commercialisation plans and identify and support programs that provide this. MTPConnect CEO Dr Dan Grant said these steps aim to influence the direction of the future of the Australian digital health environment. “There’s no doubt that a fully fledged Australian digital health industry can be a key driver of both health and economic outcomes for Australia,” Dr Grant said. “With the right incentives in place, improved access to capital and development of adaptive regulatory frameworks, we can realise our potential as a global digital health leader.” The ANDHealth report was prepared in collaboration with industry partners including CSIRO, the Australian Digital Health Agency and MTPConnect.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) built the tool and said it provides a new way of comparing Australia’s performance across a range of health-related measures from the data of 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. Some of these countries include Japan, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the US, France, Korea, Israel, Norway, Germany and Denmark. The data tool, International health data comparisons 2018, gives users interactive data visualisations of snapshot comparisons of key health indicators such as life expectancy, health risk factors and causes of death. It also aims to give insights into how Australia’s healthcare system compares, including data on the pharmaceutical market, health insurance coverage and waiting times for elective surgery. All data is sourced from the OECD Health Statistics 2018 website and results are for 2017 or the nearest available year of data for countries with available data. According to the AIHW, the tool was built to aid local healthcare professionals compare health and healthcare data between countries and get a better understanding of how the market compares to other countries. "This new data tool is an important resource, facilitating international comparative reporting, supporting policy planning and decision-making and enabling new types of research and analysis," AIHW spokesperson Claire Sparke said. How does Australia’s health compare to other OECD countries? The AIHW data presented some key findings for Australia, as compared to the rest of these 36 OECD member countries, including: Australia has the 6th lowest proportion of daily smokers (12 per cent) across OECD countries, below the OECD average of 18 per cent.  Australia has the 9th highest rates of overweight and obesity (63 per cent). This is even more notable for men, with Australian men having the 3rd highest rate of overweight and obesity, behind the US and Chile. Waiting times for most elective surgery procedures in Australia are below the OECD average. For example, Australians waited a median of 13 days for coronary bypass compared to the OECD average 22 days. “The data show that Australia performs relatively well across most of the indicators. For example, Australia has a life expectancy at birth of 82.5 years – above the OECD average of 80.6 years, and 6th highest among OECD countries,” Sparke said. “However, the data show that there are some areas where Australia could be doing better, such as rates of overweight and obesity”. This article first appeared on Healthcare IT News Australia.

“I think the biggest trend (in healthcare) is towards greater integration. Traditionally, healthcare has been very fragmented, where many different groups serve specific clinical needs without necessarily coordinating with each other. But going forward, the trend is towards integration – not just of things like databases and systems, but integration of the way we process the data and how this influences the clinical workflow,” said Prof Ngiam Kee Yuan, Group Chief Technology Officer of National University Health System (NUHS) in Singapore, in response to what he thought would be the key trends that will impact healthcare systems in future. It was with the same motivation and mission to best use the healthcare data for research at NUHS that led to the building and development of the DISCOVERY AI platform, which started about four years ago and the platform was officially announced in July 2018. The platform is what Prof Ngiam describes as a ‘sandbox’ that allows the staff at NUHS to develop AI tools in a safe and equitable way – the platform is scalable and can be applied to more than one system within the organisation. “We saw the opportunity because we had datasets which were large enough to support the development of these AI tools. And one of the advantages we have at NUHS is that we have clinicians and allied health professionals who understand, and are willing to develop these tools. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having the clinicians onboard throughout the development process.” Currently, a randomised control trial of a system as part of the platform is a free-text diagnosis machine at the Accident & Emergency (A & E) department. When doctors input a certain set of findings as part of clinical documentation, the machine would automatically provide a suggestion for a diagnosis. The team is exploring diagnosing appendicitis for a start. The trial is slightly under halfway through and Prof Ngiam hopes by the later part of 2019, they would be able to have results, which would be the basis for them to operationalise the AI tool. One of the early milestones for the NUHS DISCOVERY AI platform is its ability to sustain multiple proof-of-concept projects. With the platform, individual projects are no longer fragmented and there is the ability to aggregate, link and share large data sets. “It took us four years to get to this point and the next milestone for us is to finish our trials and to actually launch them as “software as medical devices”. Again there are some hurdles to get through before we get there but seeing where we are right now, it is very likely we should be able to get through them.” Prof Ngiam also pointed out that as the platform is unlike anything they had before and behaves like an advanced form of clinical decision support system (CDSS), which are not based on a set of rules but based on a set of complex trained weights and multiple factors that affect a certain outcome. Despite its complexity, the AI tools need to be thoroughly trialed before it can be used in routine clinical practice. “This is why we are running it as a trial now in the hospital. In essence, the platform is run under the ambit of a trial to mature the workflow and test the system under real world conditions. Operationally, what the doctors are doing during the trial is no different from what they would have done, except that we collect the data on the basis of the trial,” he added. Looking to the future, Prof Ngiam and his team is working towards completing the trials in 2019 and hopefully heading towards registration in terms of the platform being used as a medical advisory device.

An interview with Grahame Grieve, FHIR Product Director at HL7 International.

Gfrerer, who advocated keeping the proprietary VistA Veterans Affairs EHR during his hearing, will lead the multi-billion dollar modernization project.

The message of the 60 exhibitors and 12 sessions: That health information technology is not just for providers or payers but now directly impacts the individual patient.

Among his pre-show predictions? It's finally telehealth's time to shine. "It's the overnight success story that was 30 years in the making."

The new event will delve into patient-focused healthcare, life sciences trends, value-based care and innovation.

Shapiro joins the company after Zane Burke took the CEO post and Jennifer Schneider became president.