Consumer access to their own healthcare information is one of the five programs of work that the Victorian Department of Health has committed to under its digital health roadmap, and fortunately it has the experience of Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital to call on, having rolled out a patient portal back in 2016.

The rest of the Parkville precinct hospitals are also using Epic’s technology for their portals, underpinned by a shared database across the precinct, and now Alfred Health is rolling out its own, using Cerner’s patient portal technology to link into the hospital’s EMR.