Online Patient Health Records for Aboriginal Communities

<b>Project Purpose</b><p>
To further progress the expansion of Online Patient Health Records for Aboriginal people in remote and regional communities.<p>

At present a project is underway to provide Online Patient Health Records for all of the people in the eleven communities of the Ngannyatjarra Lands in W.A.. They will become the first Aboriginal community in Australia where all of their people will have online health records entered for all their visits to nurses or doctors in their remote clinics and participating hospitals.<p>

Aboriginal people are highly mobile and move residence quite often. Due to paper recording of medical records this high mobility results in fragmented records held in paper in various locations. The centralised nature of Online Patient Health Records will result in a contiguous health record which is available wherever the person turns up for health services.
Persons on the IAGC and within Rotary can assist by identifying and communicating with communities who would be interested to adopt Online Patient Health Records.<p>

<b>Resources Required</b><p>
<ul>
<li>The health clinics will require access to the Internet, and a fairly modest Windows PC or laptop computer. They will need to establish a commercial relationship with Smart Health P/L.</li>
<li>Nurses or Doctors traveling out of the health clinic and into communities with CDMA wireless phones can access the persons health records remotely by use of a laptop computer.</li>
<li>Remote communities serviced only by satellite can also access the online health records.</li>
<li>The health workers who need to access the patients online health record all need to be registered for use of a secure Smart Card which is used accredit the persons access to the health record. This is done via the Internet to the HIC in Canberra.</li>
</ul>

<b>Associated Organisations</b><p>
Smart Health Pty Ltd is a Sydney company that created the Online Patient Health Records software.<p>
The software is written to conform to the federal Department of Health and Agings HealthConnect strategy. As such this will have long term viability and will in fact be the way of the future for all Australians.<p>

<b>Further Background</b><p>
The primary reason that Aboriginal health continues to remain so poor, and is getting worse, is that there is no accurate and timely visibility of key chronic sickness levels in Aboriginal communities.<p>
The people in the community do not know what the key health issues are, and therefore they dont seek information on the causes.<p>
The local community health office cant produce reports on the key health issues, the state government health doesnt have this information either, and neither does the federal DoHA!<p>

Online Patient Health Records will enable the community to be informed. <p>
The community will then understand their key health issues. Then they can take action to eliminate the causes and improve the health of individuals and the community as a whole. <p>