Remember 2012? No, neither do I, but this time five years ago the biggest deal in eHealth was the imminent launch of a fab new national IT project that heralded the dawn of a new age in healthcare. This system would link health professionals together, improve the flow of information throughout the entire health system, save the government eleventy billion dollars in needlessly duplicated lab tests, and better yet, allow patients to see their own health information for the very first time.

And it was just four years ago that the minister for health at the time, Tanya Plibersek, fronted up at the HIC conference and announced a massive $8 million grant to NEHTA to get pathology and diagnostic imaging onto the system. This was greeted as big news by Pulse+IT and by everyone else. Test results were going to be the deal breaker, the game changer, the thing that would put the PC in the PCEHR.