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With many real-world problems still present in Australian healthcare, the time for change in healthcare is now, according to Australian Digital Health Agency Chief Executive Tim Kelsey. Speaking at the recent AFR Healthcare Summit, Kelsey said the industry must make take the action needed to improve access to digital health instead of disrupting it. “Delivering on digital health is not easy, there are many challenges ahead of us. The reality is, the world of fax machines is not safe and does not empower us to take more control of our health environment. A world of fax machines is not a world for precision medicines,” he said. “The time for action is now. We’ve got the mandate and we have the strategy. We just need to get the digital basics right and quickly.”  A key issue, Kelsey said, was the need for secure digital messaging.  “So far, secure digital messaging has had interoperability issues. But now, we have industry agreements in place to share information securely. That now will be the basis in which secure messaging will be an important step forward,” he said.  Kelsey said this is the result of a new digital health strategy that the federal and state governments committed to 18 months ago in the aim to deliver safe, evolving healthcare and the creation of modern healthcare in Australia. Last year, the governments inked a new four-year inter-governmental agreement to oversee this delivery. The strategy identified seven key priorities, of which providing registered clinicians with the ability to securely communicate with each other without resorting to paper or fax machines by the end of this year is one of them.   “By 2022, providers in Australia will have connected all their care services so that clinicians in and out of hospitals have access to the right patient at the right time.” Another key part of the strategy, according to Kelsey, is the My Health Record (MHR). “A recent report identified, quite astonishingly, that in today’s high-quality healthcare in Australia, that 1.2 million Australians will have experienced an adverse medication event in the last six months. 250,000 hospital patients are seen each year because of medications misadventure. A key cause is the absence of real-time medical records at the point of care – a key benefit of MHR,” he said. According to Kelsey, more than 50 per cent of pharmacies are now uploading to MHR – an “enormous shift” from the start of the year. “What this means is comprehensive coverage. A GP will have the most up-to-date information currently available on the patient and in that way, we will reduce the number of accidental misdiagnoses,” he said. [Read more: The Australian health system “will fail” if the pace of change is not met: KPMG | CSIRO lays out action plan for Australia’s digital health future] he next step for MHR, Kelsey said, is to work closely with the specialist communities and aged care to build connections.  “Recent PSA research found that over half of residents in an aged care facility in Australia are exposed to at least one potentially inappropriate medication. Technology can be a very strong support to reduce those instances,” he said.  “And the MHR provides those rights to citizens to decide with whom they share their data and at what time.”

In a suspected ransomware attack, a cybercrime syndicate has hacked and scrambled around 15,000 medical records at a Victorian hospital. Medical files from Melbourne Heart Group, a specialist cardiology unit based within the Cabrini Hospital premises in Melbourne, had been compromised, with the hackers restricting access to the records for more than three weeks and demanding a ransom for access, according to The Age. It was reported that the hack started as a malware attack, crippling its server and corrupting the data and that the cybercrime syndicates demanded ransom be paid in cryptocurrency for a password that breaks the encryption.  This resulted in some patients not having any records at the unit, while others got told that their “files had been lost”. The malware is believed to be from Russia or North Korea. The Age also reported that a ransom payment was likely made by the Melbourne Heart Group; however, not all of the scrambled files have been recovered. Commonwealth security agencies including the Australian Cyber Security Centre and Federal Police are assisting the hospital with the case. Cabrini Chief Executive Dr Michael Walsh confirmed with HITNA that the data storage and other information systems in specialist suites are owned and managed by the specialists, not by the Cabrini Hospital. “The specialists are not employees of Cabrini. No Cabrini data storage or patient-related systems or operations have been impacted or compromised by this incident and there has been no breach of hospital patient data,” Walsh said. He also said that the protection of patient information “is of the utmost importance and is a responsibility Cabrini takes very seriously”. A Melbourne Heart Group spokesperson told The Age that there were no connections between the data encrypted with any function in relation to cardiac implantable electrical devices like pacemakers or defibrillators. The spokesperson did not confirm the number of files affected, nor if the ransom had been paid. Update 27/02/19: Melbourne Heart Group has since advised that no patient’s privacy was compromised or breached in this ransomware attack. [Read more: NSW Health Minister apologises as hundreds of abandoned medical files are discovered in derelict former aged care facility | One year on from WannaCry and healthcare organisations are prime targets for cyber attackers] Tenable ANZ Country Manager Bede Hackney said healthcare organisations continue to be an attractive target for cybercriminals and with the rollout of My Health Records complete, malicious activity is expected to increase. “Healthcare naturally has a target on its back due to the wealth of personal and sensitive data it shares,” he said.  “Developers of ransomware and other malicious code are creating new methods of exploiting systems on a daily basis. Australian healthcare organisations, small and large, public and private, must protect themselves and the patient data they store in the face of a rapidly evolving attack surface.”   Furthermore, Hackney said that being locked out of critical health information, such as what is stored in centralised databases like My Health Records, can have “life-threatening consequences”.  However, he said the techniques utilised by ransomware can be prevented – and the probability of an infection reduced – by taking a few steps. “A good starting point is to consult the ASD Essential Eight Maturity Model, which outlines security practices such as regular patching to minimise cyber risk,” Hackney said. “With patient lives and records on the line, healthcare organisations must take a proactive approach to preserve the integrity of the data they’ve been entrusted to protect.” StorageCraft Asia-Pacific Head of Sales Marina Brook attributed recent findings from global cybersecurity insurance provider, Beazley, which said that 45 per cent of all ransomware attacks in 2017 were aimed at the healthcare sector. "The ransomware attack on the Melbourne Heart Group reinforces the importance of ensuring that data is stored securely and, equally important, is able to be restored within the shortest time possible, to prevent compromising quality of care for patients," she said. "When a human life is in the balance, there’s no time to wait for completion of bitcoin payments to criminals, nor do we have the luxury to wait for terabytes of patient data to be restored over a week. The data needs to be restored and available within seconds.” StorageCraft most recently introduced StorageCraft for Healthcare, a converged scale-out primary and secondary data platform with integrated data protection.

The answer lies in existing tools that are already widely used and known for simplicity, according to new research.

Further, gaining the ability to accelerate physical therapy sped up recovery time and decreased length of stay, which freed beds, brought in more patients and increased surgical volume to drive revenue.

Biometrics, deep learning, virtual pharmacy features and smartphones are being used to establish a digital identity resource in countries throughout Asia and Africa, according to a new report.

The integrated service will pinpoint high performing sites for conducting clinical trials, the companies said.

Info-blocking ruled the day, while APIs, FHIR, artificial intelligence and virtual reality were also prominent themes at this year’s Global Conference.

Health and social care secretary Matt Hancock has confirmed that a new joint unit bringing together leaders of the digital agenda across the health service is to be created.

The Swedish health minister has called a security lapse which left 2.7 million phone calls to a medical advice service exposed online “utterly unacceptable”.

A patient-flow system implemented at MidCentral District Health Board (DHB) in New Zealand is helping to streamline patient journeys through Palmerston North Hospital and allowing clinical staff to view important patient information at the bedside. The MIYA patient flow system, from Alcidion, is live in 17 wards and the emergency department at Palmerston North Hospital and one ward at the Horowhenua Health Centre. Alcidion is an Australian-based provider of Clinical Decision Support Systems, including Patient Flow Software, EDIS, Mobile EMR and Outpatient Solutions. MIYA gives real-time updates of bed management and patient flow throughout the hospital and health centre, showing a patient’s progress from the time they arrive to the time they are discharged, as well as an overview of hospital occupancy. Charge nurse Sarah Donnelly says, “The mobile technology is a godsend on ward rounds and has helped improved patient flow in and out of the ward, making discharges more evident and timely. I love it and wouldn’t be without it now”. The system was tested on two wards for three weeks in early November 2018 before being rolled out to all clinical areas later that month. Acute care and hospital operations service manager Carrie Naylor-Williams says the next phase of the implementation involves looking at how to use the data being collected by the system on a day-to-day basis. The hospital also plans to go live with MIYA in theatres before the end of this year. The data can be used to predict future demand, so staff know what to expect on different days and can plan accordingly. It’s also used to forecast operations for surgical patients. “We can see the cohort of patients currently admitted and what their predicted length of stay is and therefore what surgeries we can do. It will give us greater understanding to be able to manage the capacity of the hospital,” says Naylor-Williams. Bed management and capacity planning was previously done on paper and whiteboards and experienced staff getting a “general feel” for how things were looking, she explained. “We want to put be able to put a science to it and not be dependent on someone with experience being able to do it, but anybody can look at the board and see what the day’s like,” says Naylor-Williams. MIYA pulls data from the hospital’s clinical portal, so clinicians can securely view a current patient’s history, including admissions, demographics and results, on mobile devices at the bedside. The software platform has successfully integrated with five clinical information systems at Midcentral DHB, including WebPas, CareStream Radiology, Clinical portal and Pathology to provide clinical staff with detailed patient information displayed on the ward’s journey board. Naylor Williams says this means doctors can discuss results with patients face to face and make immediate decisions while on their ward rounds. They can also quickly view immediate bed availability in suitable wards. A version of this article first appeared on eHealthNews.nz.