ADF Health 2010 - Volume 11 Number 1E-HealthAustralian Defence eHealth - JeHDI
But right now Joint Health Command is playing a key role in making sure records management can finally align with the advances in practice, as the ADF takes a key national leadership role in the introduction of electronic health records throughout Australia. As one of only two organisations providing healthcare on a national basis – the other being the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) – the ADF’s eHealth initiatives have the potential to influence all Australian state and territory health jurisdictions and most of the private providers of healthcare, despite being a relatively small (in dollar terms) e-health project. A national eHealth system is a key Commonwealth and state government priority, and medical industry interest groups are investing significant policy and technical expertise into a national system. That means Defence’s groundbreaking work with its fledgling system could have significant breadth and depth of penetration of the local healthcare industry. In December 2008, the Australian Government issued its National eHealth Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to allow every Australian to have an electronic health record that can JeHDIbe accessed by authorised health care providers anywhere in the country, benefitting those who regularly move around the country, such as Defence families. Defence is therefore a major stakeholder in ensuring the Commonwealth meets its national objectives. This is reflected in the strategic objectives of Australia’s Defence Healthcare organisation, Joint Health Command. Among JHC’s objectives to deliver effective and efficient healthcare, and support Defence operations is to provide “Required health knowledge … through [an] eHealth system.” Specifically, the architects of the Defence system have said the implementation of an eHealth system will deliver:
The JeHDI Project will deliver the implementation of an ADF electronic health information system linking health data from recruitment to discharge by December 2013, and ensure that from the time a person is born in Australia, move through to adulthood and a military career, and back into the civilian arena, they will have a comprehensive and seamless management of their healthcare records.
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The medical sector astounds people on a near daily basis with exciting advances, but for some reason, the old paper medical records system continues to plague healthcare.