ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the role of e-health in delivering these health care reforms, and examines the technical, clinical and organisational regulatory challenges associated with the implementation of a national e-health system. Australian health care is faced with daunting challenges during the first half of the twenty-first century. Australian health care is delivered in a wide range of community- and hospital-based settings. At present, the ability to share information between these settings is limited and fragmented. Information technology has made a substantial impact on the timeliness and quality of clinical information access and the extraction of structured data to support evaluation of health care performance inside the walls of a single health care institution, such as a hospital, a pathology laboratory or a general practice clinic. The key to accessing appropriate ‘upstream’ care, prior to the development of complications requiring hospitalisation, is referral of the right patient to the right health care service at the right time.
