The following appeared yesterday. Ignore the title - just read on!
Low-cost, high-security systems that hinge on giant virtualised computers: cloud computing catches on
- Ian Grayson
- From: The Australian
- May 24, 2011
----- A Lot Skipped
The public sector
Looking at how you are all moving to the cloud, one of the most significant projects must be in e-health. Paul, could you give us some insight?
Madden: Naturally, it is complex. Things like a personally controlled e-health record have certain aspects that go right to the heart of privacy and security and trust -- the question of who's looking after that for me.
Connected to that are multiple providers in the health system that will have resources that will be added to this core private piece of information, bringing health records from what we call compliant data repositories and they will be, in effect, cloud-based.
If you're part of a clinic, a hospital or a GP, how you choose to get your services provided means that I need to have my information stored in a way that can be accessed into that cloud by other providers. The cloud will have to support a lot of this.
What sort of timeframe are you putting on your journey?
Madden: Well I guess the start of painting that out is July 2012, when we have that central component, which is when people can start to register for their own personal control of e-health records. There are sites at the moment where we are piloting some of the concepts to create those repositories for classes of health providers in their community.
So those things are beginning now, but I guess that's something that's going to start as a real production thing from July 2012 and start to grow rapidly from there.
Do you think we'll see all the services and all the work that you have just outlined done in this decade -- by 2020?
Madden: There will be strong examples of it, and we are already seeing examples of how the business community, including some of the medical professions, are starting to interface and demand different computing services. Will it be ubiquitous across the next decade -- I doubt it, but I think we'll have made great inroads.
----- End Extract.
Full article is here:
Now Paul Madden is the DoHA CIO. Here is the announcement of his appointment late last year.
Health appoints Paul Madden CIO
- Karen Dearne
- From: Australian IT
- November 22, 2010
THE Health Department has appointed its first chief information officer, Paul Madden, who comes from the Tax Office where he oversaw the recently completed Standard Business Reporting program.
Health secretary Jane Halton said Mr Madden had "a wealth of highly developed IT and organisational experience, as well as strategic advisory and leadership experience''.
Mr Madden assumes responsibility for boosting departmental IT capabilities in support of the Gillard government's $467 million personal e-health record initiative, and will report directly to Ms Halton.
Lots more here:
So as we all knew all the rubbish about July 2012 is just that, rubbish. Maybe in a decade there will be something useful come from all this effort and expenditure - but name a project of this scale that has actually delivered under the management and direction of Government. I am struggling, certainly nothing in Australia leaps to mind!
Another concern has to be just how appropriate 'the cloud' is for private health information. Seems to me it would have to be a very private cloud!
The questions in Senate Estimates about just what the real plans are will make riveting watching next week!
At some point the spin and BS has to stop and it looks like this about to happen! Maybe we could start again with something that has some prospect of success. I can see the start of the re-setting of expectations process underway right now!
I hope he keeps his job after Ms Roxon and Ms Halton discover they have an honest man who is prepared to tell it as it really is in their midst!
David.
