There are a lot of industry conversations and articles on what is perceived to be one of the biggest deterrents to the adoption of mHealth in Australia and elsewhere - Data Security. Conversely, patients it seems are eager to share the data they collect with their doctors and are finding ways around the current lack of integration, e.g., simply emailing their personal data to be held on existing in-house or cloud based servers. Privacy Laws can and should be complied with b

Although our focus is and should always be on the patient experience and outcomes, the synergy between sophisticated technologies and advanced IT systems and processes are at the core of our service delivery. In a recent edition of Health IT Analytics, Axway’s “Best Practices for Accelerating Digital Transformation in Healthcare - Improving Outcomes by Connecting Patients and Providers across the Care Continuum”, whilst based on the U.S. situation, is still an excellent read

A recent report from Asthma UK – Connected asthma, how technology will transform care – takes a comprehensive, yet pragmatic “State of the Nation” look at asthma care in the UK and concludes: “Every day we spend increasing amounts of time being digitally engaged and yet personal asthma action plans, which make someone four times less likely to be admitted to hospital, are still delivered in paper form. Basic questions for asthma reviews are still being collected during the pr

It’s nearly the end of the week, so I thought I would share something a little more light-hearted than normal. My search criteria was “Making Technology Human”. Obviously, I came across the Wired/Nokia collaboration but then I happened on this article – Meet the People Making Technology More Human – and thoroughly enjoyed The Big Bang excerpt. I hope you do too! P.S. I did read the article too. P.P.S. Did you know, the face to face communication provided by a human avatar

I recently came across an Australian study entitled: “An Emerging Model of Maternity Care – Smartphone, Midwife, Doctor?” highlighting the potential, particularly for interactive Smartphones to augment antenatal care services for pregnant women generally. Strangely enough, although there is a plethora of studies and pilots looking into the use of Smartphones for sufferers of chronic disease, there is, in reading through Models of Maternity Care: A Review of the Evidence and

In their research article titled 'Preventable Readmission Risk Factors for Patients With Chronic Conditions’ published in the Journal for Healthcare Quality ($) in May/June 2016, Rico, Liu, Martinez et al, explore the challenge of ascertaining those factors that drive preventable hospital readmissions. It highlights the need for condition specific (such as severity) and patient specific (such as previous admission frequency) parameters to be taken into account when assessing

Despite generic SMS reminders, missed outpatient appointments still cost approximately $500,000 annually at St Vincent’s Hospital according to a NSW Premier & Cabinet Behavioural Insight paper published in December 2015. By way of solution, this particular study focused on trialing alternative static SMS messages, with mixed results. More must be done to engage patients in managing their own health, including their appointments, but the question is what? In a marginally olde

We are pleased to announce that Joy MacDonald and Sue Franklin have joined the team at Russell Resources. Sue has held senior roles in Human Resources and Finance across the public and private sectors as well as having extensive experience in management consulting. Her most recent role was at Austin Health, where her considerable knowledge of the public health system was developed working on key change management and organisation design initiatives. Sue has qualifications in

The APAC Forum has quickly become one of the largest health improvement conferences in the world, and it’s hailed as the best. In 2016 it will convene in Sydney and is set to attract the biggest delegation of change-makers APAC Forum and Australia has ever seen. Providing a unique platform to improve the health and wellbeing of our population, APAC Forum unites global thought leaders, frontline teams, colleagues and contemporaries to: inspire every person working in health st