As we mentioned last week, Pulse+IT is conducting an exercise that aims to gather as much data as possible on expenditure on eHealth activities in Australia, starting with the cost so far of the PCEHR.

We plan to take the headline figures and break them down to hopefully provide an accurate assessment of where the money has gone, for what purpose, and ultimately what the investment has delivered to the health sector.

As you'll see from our preliminary figures, we still have quite a few gaps to fill in before we can come close to a realistic breakdown, and it has become obvious that the main challenge will be finding out how much the states and territories have contributed from their own budgets beyond their share of funding for NEHTA.

It's pretty easy to outline the headline figures: since the announcement by Nicola Roxon in 2010, the federal budget papers show there have been three allocations for the build and operation of the PCEHR adding up to $739 million. However, it is not clear exactly where that money has gone, particularly the first tranche of $466m over two years announced in the 2010-11 budget.