Government & Policy

Last year, health and social care secretary Matt Hancock said £200m would be allocated to create a new set of global digital exemplars.

Deloitte's view of the future: empowered consumers taking advantage of open, secure platforms that intermingle disparate information for care coordination and wellness "nudges." Now we just need to get there.

The resource can be used to guide the development of health products, WHO says.

Report finds that the Therapeutic Goods Administration must improve evaluation of safety practices. 

Private hospitals in Thailand will have to display the price of medicines so that consumers can make better-informed decisions prior to purchase, starting from this week. According to a report by the National News Bureau of Thailand, the country’s Ministry of Commerce has implemented a new measure after announcing medicine and medical supplies as controlled items, requiring hospitals to display pricing of some 3,000 items via QR codes allowing the general public to make comparisons. Deputy Minister of Commerce Chutima Bunyapraphasara said that the central committee on pricing of goods and services’ meeting has agreed to authorise the Department of Internal Trade to implement control measures for pricing of medicine, medical supplies and medical services. The measure will require private hospitals, manufacturers, importers and wholesalers to report sales prices to the department, which will then later be published on the department’s website. Any changes to pricing must be informed 15 days in advance. On January 9 this year, the Ministry of Commerce approved plans to put medical-related fees, including drugs, supplies and service charges, on the price control list of the government’s central committee on prices of goods and services. The order for private hospitals to display prices of drugs is a direct follow-up from the subcommittee formed to work out measures to control medical-related fees. Failure to comply with the new measure will result in up to 1 year imprisonment or up to 20,000 baht fine, or both. Private hospitals, which refuse to issue prescriptions to patients for medicine purchases outside the hospital, will face up to 5 years imprisonment, up to 100,000 baht fine, or both. The Department of Internal Trade will be inviting representatives from hospitals to explain the measure, and will consider further measures to control medicine and medical service pricing in the future.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health will provide access to two core national systems - the National Health Index (NHI) and Health Practitioner Index (HPI) – using FHIR interfaces. Group manager digital strategy and investment Darren Douglass said that by improving access to these core data sets as FHIR resources, the Ministry expects to make it easier for healthcare organisations and vendors to use them within their health applications. The staged release of NHI and HPI production FHIR APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) is planned from mid-2020.     “New Zealand has adopted the HL7 FHIR (Health Level 7, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically as a core component of our interoperability architecture and standards, along with SNOMED CT and other health terminology services,” said Douglass. The NHI is a unique identifier assigned to every person in New Zealand and the HPI identifies health professionals. “These two foundational data sets are already widely used across the NZ health sector so it made sense to provide access to these first,” he said.   HL7NZ chair emeritus David Hay is working with the Ministry on the project and says there are big gains to be had by opening up health data to multiple players. Existing players like GP and hospital system suppliers generally already have access, but the interfaces are not that standardised or widely used, he explained. “My vision is that we have an eco-system where smaller specialist systems can be created that nevertheless utilise these core national systems,” said Hay. “This is a critical first step on the road to allowing that and I’m really delighted the Ministry is making this step and putting funding behind getting this working.” Hay is assisting with the design and community engagement as a large part of FHIR is the community of people who can assist with both the design of the interfaces and implementation of them. Initial work has been on the NHI interface with a draft design due to be completed before a HL7 FHIR and SNOMED CT Implementation Workshop in Auckland on June 19, where it will be tested by the community. Hay said by involving the FHIR community in the process, it ensures changes to the design are made early on in the process rather than needing expensive re-working at a later date. Once the necessary security and privacy protections are in place, Hay hopes to see other data sets exposed in the same way, such as prescribing data. “FHIR is emerging internationally as the next generation of interoperability standards,” he said. “New Zealand has the potential of becoming leaders in some of this space because we are relatively small, we have national systems already in place and we’re willing to give things a try.” Douglass said the changes are part of the wider Digital Health Strategic Framework objective of accessible trusted information. Some read-only APIs are planned for earlier release to add and update functionality and guides for testing and implementation will be released in advance of each production release. This article first appeared on eHealthNews.nz.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the combined entities would face competition from generics.

Despite one senator's hope to move deliberately with rulemakings and not repeat some errors of meaningful use, National Coordinator Donald Rucker said delays only lengthen the time that consumers are "not in control of their care."

Digital transformation has to be at the core of business, policy and strategy, argues Dr Sam Shah, NHS England director of digital development.

Company says the security flaw has not been exploited yet and urges customers to update to most recent version.