Virtual is good, but we still hold a candle for face to face

Pulse+IT was out in force this week at the Digital Health Institute Summit in Melbourne, which for some of us was the first opportunity to see interstate human beings in person for at least the last two years. Unsurprisingly there was a pretty big turn-out, with double the numbers expected turning up amid familiar sights like long lines at the espresso coffee stands and non-existent lines for ye olde brewde coffee stande, understandable considering it offers warmed up sump oil and dishwashing water and not much else.

Despite a shortened agenda, the Australasian Institute of Digital Health’s program team managed to shoehorn in a great deal of pretty great content into the two days. Very little was dull (barring a speech by a regulatory agency representative, but that was to be expected), and we all learned a lot. It was all filmed as well so AIDH members can see everything online. There’s also a virtual showcase happening next week that will be streamed live.

We were particularly impressed with a session on Victoria’s digital health roadmap, which covered progress on cybersecurity as well as more interesting strategies like the commitment to patient portals. The planned health information exchange has raised a great deal of interest, as did a later talk on the roll-out of Victoria’s COVID-19 Vaccination Management System (CVMS). This has been a touch controversial considering the money spent on it and how difficult it was to implement, but Victoria is sticking with the program, and Queensland is too, having adopted the Microsoft platform.

That all of this – and the other states’ struggles with booking systems and inventory management – could have been avoided had the Commonwealth Department of Health listened to reason and to certain vendors back in June 2020, when it became obvious that mass vaccination was the only way out of the pandemic, is a moot point at this stage. Lessons may be learned, but they seem to be soon forgotten.

While all of the talks were pretty good, we were seriously impressed with two in particular. The first was Healthdirect Australia’s Ian Vaile’s talk on the roll-out of the National Coronavirus Helpline early in the pandemic and how it has now become an incredibly valuable knowledge base, the model for which can be applied to future pandemics or natural disasters. One of the reasons why this system of centralised information seems to have worked so well is that it was not so much a technology or clinical system roll-out as a well-curated and authoritative content one. It seems to have worked.

The other seriously impressive talk was by Western NSW LHD lead virtual pharmacist Brett Chambers on the concept of a virtual clinical pharmacy service. This service is now improving the capture of medication histories, medication reconciliation in hospital and medication reconciliation on discharge to patients, clinicians and health services that simply have not had access to it before. It’s a measure of what big tech like a statewide EMR and eMeds solution, allied to widespread video conferencing through agile apps like Pexip, can do to provide access to health services that city types otherwise take for granted.

Take a look at those two presentations in particular through the AIDH Digital Health TV service. And if you can, watch iCIMS’ MD Ali Besiso’s talk on his company’s work at The San hospital in Sydney on multidisciplinary team meetings and the technology that is being harnessed to facilitate them. Microsoft’s legendary Excel EMR makes an appearance, hopefully but unrealistically for the last time.

Vote here or leave your comments below.