Copy link
Increase text size
Decrease text size
Link copied

Australian government considers blockchain, big data, IoT for national health infrastructure

Fri, 27 Sep 2019, 05:45 am UTC

The Australian Digital Health Agency has issued a request for information (RFI) seeking inputs from the industry on the “next-generation technology” for its future digital health platform, ARN reported.

According to the details, the RFI particularly deals with “the future of the National Infrastructure, including My Health Record,” which is currently operated by the federal agency. Submissions to the RFI are slated to close on December 03.

“This RFI seeks information from industry about potential future options, themes and considerations for products and services, including technology considerations for the future,” the RFI document reads.

“The Agency does not have a fixed view on the future design or technologies, nor does the Agency assume that the current model, technologies, operations are how the national infrastructure should operate into the future. Instead, the Agency intends to use information, from this RFI, to inform the development of future plans, including any requirements for capabilities, products and services to inform future development.”

The agency listed a number of potential next-gen technologies, including blockchain technology to “underpin the future of EHR systems to drive the future of Healthcare record keeping,” artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, big data, cloud computing, and the internet of medical things (IoMT) for a connected infrastructure of medical devices and software applications.

The themes that will be explored by the agency and providers include open architecture, interoperability and data sharing, digitally enabled solutions, application of analytics for better management of unstructured data, making health data discoverable, ensuring security and privacy and more.

The agency is also interested in developing smart APIs and an API strategy, which it said are “integral to evolution of access and information (specifically data access policies).”

Previously, the federal agency chose Accenture as its national infrastructure partner for personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR), which led to the development of My Health Record, an online summary of Australian’s health information.

However, after potential data privacy and cyber risk concerns were raised, the Australian parliament passed a law last year, allowing citizens to opt-out of My Health Record anytime and permanently delete their records.

TokenPost | [email protected]

<Copyright © TokenPost. All Rights Reserved. >

Back to top
Copyright ⓒ TokenPost. All Rights Reserved.