My Health Record

The Australian Government has a policy to development a lifetime electronic health record for all its citizens. PCEHR—the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record—is the major national EHR initiative in Australia, being delivered through territory, state, and federal governments. This electronic health record was initially deployed in July 2012, and is under active development and extension by the Australian Digital Health Agency.[1]

MediConnect is an earlier program that provides an electronic medication record to keep track of patient prescriptions and provide stakeholders with drug alerts to avoid errors in prescribing.[2]

The Australian standards organisation, Standards Australia, and federal Department of Health have created an electronic health website, "e-health"[3] relating to information not only about Australia and what is currently going on about EHRs but also globally. Many key stakeholders contribute to the process of integrating EHRs within Australia. They range from each States Departments of Health to Universities around Australia and National E-Health Transition Authority to name a few. The name of PCEHR has changed to My Health Record since 2015 with opt-out model. Australian government budgeted around $485million for this system which potentially could save nearly 5,000 lives per year when functional state.[4][5][6][7]

Security and privacy concerns have been raised about the platform. Originally, participation of the system was to opt-in by each person giving consent, however due to low participation rates, the platform moved to become opt-out instead. Each Australian had three months, until October 2018 to opt-out. After October 2018, however, any user can delete their My Health Record, as well as restrict access to providers. In a life-threatening emergency, certain providers (like hospital emergency departments) can access a patient's My Health Record without being given explicit access.[8] There are 13,000 health providers involved, from specialists and general practice doctors to pharmacies and hospitals.

• Official website