By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

A few weeks ago, WTF Health took the show on the road to Australia’s digital health conference, HIC 2019. We captured more than 30 interviews (!) from the conference, which is run by the Health Informatics Society of Australia (hence the HISA Studio branding) and I had the opportunity to chat with most of the Australian Digital Health Agency’s leadership, many administrators from the country’s largest health systems, and a number of health informaticians, clinicians, and patients. I’ll be spotlighting a few of my favorites here in a four-part series to give you a flavor of what’s happening in health innovation ‘Down Under.’ For much more, check out all the videos on the playlist here.  

What trip Down Under would be complete without an update on the Australian government’s My Health Record program? The “opt out” period is over and now 22M Aussies (90% of the population) have electronic records managed by the gov’t. Bottom line: They’ve built it, no one’s really opted out, but no one’s really come yet either…especially on the provider side to populate the record with info.

Here are four different takes on what’s going on and what’s next.

For the ‘general gist’ of what’s happening:

Elizabeth Deveny, Chair of the Australian Digital Health Agency

For the contrarian point of view (from a patient AND former gov’t official):

Tom Skotnicki

For the clinician point of view:

Meredith Makeham, Chief Medical Advisor, Australian Digital Health Agency

For the informatician/IT point of view:

Angela Ryan, Chief Clinical Information Officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency