This week in health IT got off to a gallop when we revealed there'd been finally been a breakthrough in secure messaging interoperability after many years of reporting on false starts, but by mid-week, all eyes were on the plummeting returns for Telstra's long-suffering shareholders.

We realised that Pulse+IT is getting a bit long in the tooth when we reflected that we've been reporting on attempts to make secure messaging interoperable since the magazine was established back in 2006. Since then, there have been any number of announcements of breakthroughs: the secure message delivery (SMD) standard, the announcement of the SMX collaboration involving the three main vendors, NEHTA's SMD-POD trials, which promised lots and went nowhere.