Talking HealthTech: Frank and Lorraine Pyefinch of Best Practice

Jun 25, 2020

Kathy Hubble, the founder of Amelio Health, says that 1 in 5 Australians experience chronic pain – and digital solutions can help.

Jun 22, 2020

Why don’t great whites ever bite private equity managers? Professional courtesy.

Jun 17, 2020

Whilst COVID-19 has seen other software providers and even the government rapidly turning to the cloud, Best Practice are taking a more considered approach as they develop their app and cloud-based service.

Jun 17, 2020

It turns out that there’s nothing quite like a pandemic to turn a slow moving politically sclerotised digital health sector upside down.

Jun 15, 2020

‘Electiceuticals’ are electronic devices that are designed to deliver a similar therapeutic effect as pharmaceuticals.

Jun 17, 2020

Before the COVID-19 crisis hit, NPS MedicineWise had the option for GPs to meet with educators online instead of face-to-face, but, over the past few months, the number of virtual visits has increased by around…

Jun 16, 2020

Allergy Pal from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute), CareMonitor, Oculo, FRED IT's WhatsApp electronic prescribing solution and Disease Tracker by PenCS, are all inaugural winners of  The Australian Digital Health Agency's Innovation Challenge

Jun 22, 2020

Specialists will now have access to the same system that some GPs use to manage patient bookings online, as HotDoc and Genie launch their new system for specialists.

Jun 11, 2020

Elsevier Health is launching a series of webinars looking at the transformation of nursing, particularly in the light of changes in digital health and education post COVID-19.

Jun 11, 2020

Leading telehealth provider, Healthdirect Australia and MediRecords, Australia's fast growing cloud patient management system vendor, joined together to deliver the National Coronavirus Helpline in just a few days.

Jun 11, 2020

Universal telehealth was a no brainer for COVID-19, and is for the future, but there is a lot of mess to sort out after the pandemic

Jun 10, 2020

Six reasons why things will never go back to the way they were in digital health, and how we could still manage to squander such an opportunity if we’re not careful.

Jun 10, 2020

Recent innovations in digital health have seen a dramatic increase in the number of available mobile health apps. But how trustworthy are they?

Jun 10, 2020

COVID-19 has put a spanner in the works for medical conference organisers, but the RACGP is not letting the virus put a stop to its major education and networking event.

Jun 09, 2020

The introduction of telehealth was a stand-out success of the health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Expansion of telehealth should be part of the new normal, but this should not simply be a roll-over of…

May 14, 2020

The traditional dominance of the patient management systems (PMS) as the primary care digital gatekeepers is starting to be challenged

May 14, 2020

A heartening and perhaps surprising revelation from COVID-19 is that government has been harbouring a lot of latent talent for rapid and effective digital innovation and implementation. Can we somehow leverage that moving forward?

May 14, 2020

Wild Health publisher Jeremy Knibbs is joined by GP leaders in digital health - Dr Amandeep Hansra and Dr Nathan Pinskier, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, and Dr Harry Nespolon, the president of the RACGP, to discuss…

May 14, 2020

TalkingHealthTech's Peter Birch talks to Medical Director's Matt Barabout what challenges faced the PMS provider in the run in to COVID-19

Jun 09, 2020

Register now for Wild Health Melbourne for FREE and either get 40% off the live summit price if we go ahead with a live summit, or retain your registration as FREE entry to Wild Health's…

Apr 09, 2020

This strange video has surfaced promoting MedicalDirector’s new integrated telehealth offering alongside a somewhat confusing announcement by the government to upgrade GP internet access for free via the NBN

Apr 09, 2020

Ever nimble, Peter Birch from Talking Health Tech ran a panel of four software company founder/CEOs just last week to gauge how much work they've done on for the COVID-19 induced telehealth changes, and what…

Apr 09, 2020

Everyone wanted telehealth. But like this?

Apr 09, 2020

Technology changes thrust upon the primary care sector, especially telehealth, may result in seismic structural changes to the sector by the time the crisis is over

Mar 23, 2020

COVID-19 distress has let our GPs, software vendors, pharma companies and government to be suddenly move oceans and more innovative and pragmatic about how they deliver services

Mar 23, 2020

We are all collectively participants and witnesses to perhaps the most significant health crisis the world has experienced in the past 100 years.

Mar 23, 2020

This was our Saturday post for our daily GP newsletter, but interestingly, many of the stories relate to innovation created by COVID-19. Other stories, like the NSW Health Cruise Ship debacle, are just a bit…

Mar 04, 2020

Melbourne's Wild Health on June 2 at Collins Square has the most interest and edgy program of all the Wild Health Sumits to date with headline keynotes from Aashima Gupta, Google Global Head of Cloud…

Mar 04, 2020

Telstra Health, once had the grand ambition to be ‘the’ Australian digital health platform. And then things went a bit awry. Now the group is stable, growing and winning interesting national digital health contracts. do…

Mar 23, 2020

Various GP groups, including the RACGP, are asking the state and federal governments to temporarily relax legislation around the current e-prescription infrastructure, to allow doctors to prescribe for COVID-19 and self-isolated patients using telehealth.

Mar 04, 2020

Electronic only scripts looks like a watershed project for how the government and vendors view FHIR moving forward in Australia

Mar 04, 2020

Is this a sign that digital health has finally hit the big time, or is it just more PR fun and games amid the from the enigmatic and strange US president

Jan 30, 2020

The Department of Human Services has decided to release the guidelines governing the disclosure of private health data to the police, one year after rejecting a Freedom of Information request by our sister publication, The Medical…

Jan 30, 2020

Another potential candidate in our series looking at what companies in digital health might end up as being the major platform around which national health could transact

Jan 30, 2020

Guess which company tops Slate.com's annual list of the 30 most evil technology led corporations? The same one that pharmacists are now very worried about in Australia.

Jan 28, 2020

Last days to get Wild Health Summit No 5 Early Bird rates which are 30% off final price

Jan 22, 2020

The recruitment process for a new Australian Digital Health Agency CEO started in earnest this week with this ad from search firm Watermark. What are we to expect of this process and are there any…

Jan 14, 2020

The’yes’ vote on the merger of the Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) with the Australian College of Health Informatics (ACHI) just prior to Xmas last year signals some likely major shifts in the profile…

Jan 21, 2020

Yesterday the ADHA announced that yet to be decided standards for secure messaging will in future be mandatory for government procurement, a stake in the ground, which although maybe a long way off, may belie…

Jan 21, 2020

The language used in electronic medical records is deeply confusing to a computer

Dec 13, 2019

We've got the whole EHR dilemma ass up according to US physician and tech blogger Dr Bryan Vartabedian

Dec 13, 2019

Peter Birch talks health tech to digital health social entrepreneur Matiu Bush

Dec 13, 2019

Researchers at CSIRO’s Data61 are looking at how how social media might form part of an early-warning system for such rapidly developing asthma outbreaks as thunderstorm asthma

Nov 19, 2019

Next in our continuing series on the top 10 companies that have the most potential to make it as a true healthcare platform business over the next 5-10 years

Nov 19, 2019

Who invests more than $260m per annum on a venture where there are no meaningful measurements of return on investment?

Nov 19, 2019

A guest post by Dr Marcus Tan, CEO of HealthEngine, clarifying some points made in our article last month on Top 10 platforms which looked at both HealthEngine and Hotdoc

Nov 19, 2019

A global skin cancer database and some neat AI may underpin some serious disruption in how we are going to detect and therefore treat skin cancer

Dec 13, 2019

The loss of the three top managers at the ADHA in a matter of weeks has left people wondering about where the agency goes from here

Nov 19, 2019

Peter Birch of Talking Health Tech and MetaOptima fame (see article in this newsletter on Dermtech) chats through the history of Best Practice, which is probably the market leader in Patient Management Software in the…

Sep 27, 2019

Healthcare  has begun to lurch towards the era of open system, APIs and digital platform based connectivity. This is a new ecosystem where data rules and where typically, only a few major platforms will  end…

Sep 27, 2019

Health tech officionada, Peter Birch of MetaOptima talks deep and meaningful on the future of health innovation and funding in Australia with Medical Director CEO, Matt Bardsley

Jan 21, 2020

Has the Pharmacy Guild finally met its match

Sep 27, 2019

GP bodies remain uneasy with data-sharing arrangements under the Practice Incentive Payment – Quality Improvement, despite having won a reprieve of sorts without sacrificing the payments promised.

Sep 27, 2019

The DoD healthcare system contract might provide us with a view of what we could do in a connected healthcare system which is free of complex market factors such as vendor commercial imperatives, state vs…

Sep 27, 2019

Now the dust has settled on the federal election, everyone seems to be getting used to a government they didn’t think they’d have. With no change in government, the ADHA is ramping up its core…

Sep 27, 2019

SPONSORED The BP Premier summit, to be held at the Brisbane  Convention and Exhibition Centre between May 22 and May 24 next year, might be the most interesting gathering of BP users yet, with the market-leading software…

Aug 12, 2019

HealthEngine has made bad mistakes and mishandled its response to its patient data handling crisis, but the timing of the ACCC action against the company and the tone of its attack feel very convenient

Aug 09, 2019

Although well intentioned, the new PIP QI regime exposes a federal government that is underestimating the massive damage that could be done to the well being of their frontline healthcare troops in general practice and…

Aug 09, 2019

Pathology giants, Sullivan Nicolaides (SNP), are now routinely uploading diagnostic test reports to patients’ My Health Record (MHR). The size and scale of the SNP set up marks an important new, and long promised, information…

Aug 09, 2019

In part 3 of neat start ups set to go places we look at one of the leading plays attempting to digitise all real time payments within the health ecosystem

Jul 19, 2019

If you're interested in the gory detail here is the near full video of the ehealth data sharing standards and governance debate from last month's Wild Health Summit in Sydney.

Jul 19, 2019

In part 2 of our ‘neat start ups’ series, we look at DermEngine, a simple application of AI and cloud based technology that might transform how we assess and treat skin cancer

Jul 19, 2019

Angst over the need for Australia to develop and introduce suitable governance and standards for the delivery of ehealth products and data sharing might be misplaced. The market, led by powerful government procurement and commissioning…

Dec 13, 2019

The NOA audit clearance of the MHR is a lot more worrying than it just being misunderstood as the MHR project is working

Jul 19, 2019

Migration from not so interoperable and older closed architectures to ones which are more flexible, open, web based and interoperable, may no longer be a matter of waiting things out to see how the market…

Jun 28, 2019

If Matiu Bush’s One Good Street initiative could scale, and it looks like it could, it’s simple but brilliant logic, could end up having an ROI for our health system that would leave your average…

Jun 22, 2019

A smartphone app that analyses the sound of coughs is proving to be a successful diagnostic tool in the assessment of paediatric respiratory conditions, researchers say.

Jun 28, 2019

Dig deep into just who might have access to your My Health Record and you find it gets a little grey at some point. Will the public be understanding of the practicalities of having certain…

Jul 01, 2019

Patient centric is a fatigued term and we need to get more realistic about what we could and should do in the context of a very complex and risky system

Jul 02, 2019

Who'd have thought that accounting software might be the first thing you'd consider if you wanted an immediate and large increase to your practice efficiency and profitability. The first in our new series on neat…

Jul 01, 2019

SPONSORED: Best Practice, one of Australia's leading patient management systems, is launching a patient app that is likely to significantly change the doctor-patient communication dynamic across it's broad footprint of practices

Jul 03, 2019

The Medical Republic brings you the highlights from the Wild Health Summit, including how we might efficiently streamline the transition of our healthcare system from acute care to chronic care.

Jul 01, 2019

GPs know there are potential benefits of recommending smartphone apps to patients but need professional guidance to avoid their consult feeling like a “Telstra shop,” a study says.

Jun 18, 2019

Tess Van De Rijt i,CEO and Founder of Patient Connector,  will be one of our four showcase start ups to pitch to the audience at next weeks Wild Health Summit in Sydney

Jun 18, 2019

Tim Blake of Semantic Consulting, a leading digital health consultancy, chats to Wild Health about why Australian governments and healthcare providers might be very slow to board the digital health transformation bus, and what that…

Jun 18, 2019

One of our iconic medical AI experts warns that AI is finally impacting the frontline of medicine seriously, with all its potential for good and bad outcomes but it’s such a hyped topic, Australia might…

Jun 07, 2019

Technology has already delivered impressive improvements to the way in which healthcare is delivered in Australia – but the opportunity to do more is enormous. In this sponsored post Equinix Australia managing director, Jeremy Deutsch,…

Jun 18, 2019

Medical AI is here according to Prof Enrico Coiera of the Australian Alliance of Artificial Intelligence In Healthcare (AAAIH). Is that a good or bad thing?

May 26, 2019

The COO of the Australian Digital Health Agency, Bettina McMahon, talks to the challenges of their secure messaging program and its context as the Agency rolls into its consultation phase for a much broader attempt…

May 26, 2019

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. It’s a cliché that more than a few of my old bosses in corporate used on me during strategy, reforecasting and budget sessions. It was usually…

May 26, 2019

Our first podcast, albeit borrowed from talkinghealthtech.com.au, a new Australian health tech podcast by Peter Birch. Grahame explains the origins of FHIR and where it's heading. It's much better listening than reading!

May 08, 2019

Australia’s medical software industry, though peppered with some great talent, interesting start ups, and high potential emerging software platform plays, isn’t where you’d normally be looking for our next IT unicorn. But we may just…

May 26, 2019

Big bold new digital hospitals might be  to our future healthcare needs what, to some extent, coal fired power stations ended up becoming for our energy sector

May 08, 2019

Telstra Health, once plagued by issues of strategic discontinuity and then by its National Cancer Screening Registry contract with the Federal Government, appears to be emerging into a new and productive phase of continuity and…

May 08, 2019

The Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI) are looking to combine forces.  Why now?

May 08, 2019

Will the appointment of the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA)CEO to the board of the ADHA bear fruit, or conflict?

May 08, 2019

Augh. Not secure messaging again? Ex Healthlink CEO Tom Bowden has a confession to make, an offer we surely can’t refuse, and some practical tips for how our digital health Agency might crack our ongoing…

May 08, 2019

If you expected something more from a political debate on health policy than volleys of talking points and dollar figures, interspersed by a little light sledging, then you must be new here.

Apr 16, 2019

When do we cross the line where EMRs have an ROI for patient and doctor well being, as well as that of the bottom line of providers

Apr 16, 2019

If the various key stakeholders in secure messaging really walked  the talk on this vital part of healthcare interoperability in Australia, why do we have virtually no progress in the last decade? Something fundamental is…

Apr 16, 2019

Of the many roadblocks involved in unleashing the potential of digital health to transform healthcare, a key one is clinician buy-in. What if more doctors with a creative bent were attracted to a career in…

Apr 16, 2019

Many potential pitfalls in the transformation of a health system are avoidable, provided they are recognised early. Australia needs to proceed incrementally, learning as we go and tolerating error.

Apr 17, 2019

Small, portable ultrasound machines can fast-track diagnosis and are changing the face of emergency medicine, experts say.

Mar 21, 2019

How do we take our current and somewhat vaguely expressed desire for improvement in interoperability in Australia, and turn it into something real? Fast Interoperability Healthcare Resource (FHIR) founder, Grahame Grieve, has some ideas.

Mar 28, 2019

The journey of sorting out securing messaging in Australia is starting to feel a little like groundhog day

Mar 28, 2019

EMRs, the MHR, interoperability, the patient-centric imperative? Digital health has so far promised big and delivered little, especially at the coalface of health, general practice.

Feb 08, 2019

Have the rumours of the death of desktop PMS for GPs and specialists, in the wake of 'the cloud',been greatly exaggerated? The recent troubles at major PMS vendor Medical Director, and among some of the…

Mar 07, 2019

The US governments proposal to force providers and vendors to stop information would mean FHIR gets mandated as the health sharing standard across the US, and force others around the world to look at whether…

Mar 28, 2019

If you haven't caught up with this recent tome on the painful history of EMRs in the US, here's your chance. Reproduced with permission from Kaiser Health News

Mar 07, 2019

Australia’s approach to evolving healthcare web sharing standard Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) looks more strategically isolated following the US government’s recent proposal to mandate it as a platform for all health data sharing standards…

Jan 23, 2019

Apple’s decision to transform from a smartphone company to a healthcare company may change all our lives

Jan 18, 2019

Wild Health Irregular Insights is a new health tech and innovation newsletter focussing on industry led insights, opinions and analysis for Australian health technology professionals

Jan 15, 2019

There's a big difference between being a medical authority and a medical influencer. You can be both but the web and social media are blurring the lines with some likely fallout

Sep 21, 2018

At last year’s senate hearings into the My Health Record (MHR) one of the star witnesses for the defence (the defence of the MHR that is), was the Australian Digital Health Agency’s (ADHA) chief operating…

Jan 18, 2019

Thousands of records containing sensitive information such as HIV-status, past abortions and mental health issues are being requested by the police every year – and doctors and privacy experts are deeply concerned about it.

Jan 26, 2019

GP patient management software giant MedicalDirector has restructured its business significantly, letting go as many  14 staff members, according to sources.

Jan 15, 2019

What if your patients told you a lot of useful stuff before they sat down with you? And when they eventually walked in, you’d already read a summary of who they are, what they think…

Jan 18, 2019

Did the Hello Health RACGP debacle bring the long time RACGP commercial manager Craig Martin undone? If you’re trying to slide something under the media radar, then the twilight zone between Christmas and New Year…

Jan 15, 2019

Just before Xmas , the medical software industry of Australia put a very large and potentially game-changing stake in the ground, which may have a very positive impact on doctors (and patients) around the country…

Nov 18, 2018

An examination of the legislation underpinning Medicare Australia has revealed that the precedent for the police accessing MyHealthRecord without a warrant was set a long time ago. Medicare Australia is legally allowed to share linked…

Nov 15, 2018

If you think you’ve got a bad case of the travel bug, get this: Dr. John Halamka travels 400,000 miles a year. That’s equivalent to fully circling the globe 16 times.

Nov 05, 2018

Healthcare is resisting digital transformation in a manner that people should think about much more carefully. Here’s why

Aug 07, 2018

Why is that the robot is winning in the return on investment stakes against an EMR.

Aug 08, 2018

The cloud and mobile make your next look at upgrading your patient management system a potentially game-changing decision

Aug 07, 2018

Spend enough time in the tech infosphere and you’ll find that there’s no shortage of confidence in the ability of technology to make us better as humans.

Sep 21, 2018

Last week’s MHR senate inquiry spent a lot of time trying to understand what some of the numbers meant. There were so many numbers in such confusing context you got the feeling the ADHA apparatchiks…

Aug 08, 2018

The MHR isn’t everyone’s favourite government project at the moment, but there are some reasons to be cheerful.

Aug 07, 2018

Doctors, particularly GPs,  are at the epicentre of our evolving digital health landscape. But will they be gatekeepers or pawns in an evolving Game of Thrones around control of information and data distribution in the sector?

Aug 07, 2018

In a now-famous experiment in the 1970s, mothers were asked to sit across from their seated infants, but instead of saying "hello", smiling or cooing, the mothers were told to remain expressionless and unresponsive.

Aug 07, 2018

A couple of months ago the announcement that patient cloud management system start-up MediRecords had won the contract to replace the PMS of visiting doctors in Queensland Health who also practise privately, seemed to pass…

Aug 07, 2018

“All humans have three lives: public, private and secret.” – Gabriel Garcia Marques

Aug 07, 2018

The issue of the MyHealthRecord has been troubling me. I lack the eloquence to express my concerns sometimes, so please bear with me.

Aug 07, 2018

Drivers are distracted klutzes and computers could obviously do better. Self-driving cars will make all of us safer on the road.

Aug 07, 2018

Seven years after specialists were granted rebates for remote telehealth consultations, rural GPs hope their time has finally arrived to break the access barrier for patients in the bush.

Aug 07, 2018

Since the period for opting out of My Health Record began on July 16, experts in health, privacy and IT have raised concerns about the security and privacy protections of the system, and the legislation…

Aug 07, 2018

The MHR opt out launched on Monday to a raft of consumer media interviews which reveal a disturbing lack of understanding of some key issues underlying the project.

Aug 06, 2018

The messages embedded in popular mental health apps may be alienating and burdening people experiencing significant psychological difficulties, while medicalising the normal ups and downs of life, researchers say.