Canada is the latest country to introduce legislation to enable its citizens to securely access their own health data in a welcome move that will also see a prohibition on IT vendors from “information blocking” and a requirement that all IT companies providing digital health services in Canada adopt common standards.
Canada’s new health data sharing legislation is aimed at improving the interoperability of health information technology but it also follows the US lead in prohibiting information blocking, a practice which in the past the US has tended to blame vendors for but which is much more due to health systems themselves not wanting or not able to share data, or for alleged privacy reasons.
The 21st Century Cures Act introduced in 2016 aimed to end that practice and it has been in some ways successful, although there is still a lot of argy-bargy over the big EMR vendors and whether they comply, as we mentioned in our blog from last week.
The US and Canada join the EU in legislating for sharing of data, with the EU last month agreeing to rules for the European Health Data Space (EHDS), which will require all electronic health record systems to comply with the specifications of the European EHR exchange format (EEHRxF), ensuring that they are interoperable at EU level.
Here in Australia we haven’t yet got to the stage of mandating that vendors use standards, although they are encouraged to do so and there’s some funding for them for the work, but it is likely that before the year is out, we will mandate that health data generated in the public system is shared by default through the My Health Record.
It’s improbable that we’ll ever mandate that vendors embrace standards, although they’d be mad not to as soon enough they won’t be able to sell anything into the public sector. It’s in areas like aged care that a carrot and stick approach will be needed.
The Department of Health and Aged Care recently released a summary of the consultation it conducted on better access to pathology and diagnostic imaging reports on the MyHR, and faster access for patients through removing the seven-day delay.
There is nothing in there that is surprising and no new arguments that we can see – most people are in favour of better access, but the RACGP and Pathology Australia are against faster access – but we’ve always thought the government pushing ahead with these policies was a foregone conclusion.
The only question is timing. It is still hoped the legislation will be available by the end of the year, but early in the new year may be more realistic.
We had planned to bring you some big news in clinical AI this week but that will have to wait until next week. In the meantime, it’s all happening in consumer AI. Apple this week introduced Apple Intelligence for its devices, partnering with Open AI and sending Elon Musk into a jealous fury, but that is pretty much par for the course these days.
We were much more taken with this hilarious delve into the things that consumer AI patently cannot do just yet, despite the hype. Solve the NY Times Spelling Bee? Not on your life. (Pulse+IT is proud to say we were dubbed Queen Bee on the example, but we, unlike ChatGPT, cheat.)
Our regular poll will be back next week but in the meantime, here’s the results from last week.
We asked: Following the collapse of MediSecure, is the lack of competition in ePrescription services anything to worry about? Yes indeed, readers said. 84 per cent were concerned. Here’s what you said.
