By Alice Downey | Health Editor

Experts at CeBit conference say Australia is not technologically ready for proposed e-Health system. Image: Alice Downey

New E-Health initiatives to connect patients with doctors won’t work because of a lack of infrastructure, experts said at the CeBit Conference in Sydney yesterday.

One of these initiatives is the implementation of Tele-Health practices such as video conferencing to take pressure off the current Australian health system.

Brendan Lovelock, the Health Practice Head at Cisco Systems, says Australia’s current health system is not sustainable for the future.

“There are not, and will not be, sufficient resources to meet our expectations of care in Australia,” Lovelock said.

However, Cathy Steel, General Manager at the Australian Centre for Health Innovation, said the initiatives are unable to deliver because of outdated technology and the slow roll-out of the National Broadband Network.

Additionally, E-Health initiatives promise to fulfil the health needs of Australia’s aging population.

Steel says that the potential benefits of clinical Tele-Health include health access for remote communities and a reduction in the amount of unnecessary hospital admissions.

The system would also allow doctors to collaborate directly with the patients to provide the best care possible.

IT companies like Philips, Tunstall and Intel have developed take-home computer devices to help patients take an active role in monitoring their own health.

These devices can help patients check their vital signs, answer questions about their daily health and even video conference with doctors.

While the technologies are not yet available yet for consumers to buy, hospitals are looking at investing in these technologies to discharge patients and free up beds more quickly.

By distributing these computer devices they can reduce the patient’s recovery time spent in-hospital. These devices could also help community nurses by limiting home visits but with the Intel video units currently priced at around $1000 each, progress is slow.

This new technology may even allow doctors to write e-prescriptions though current medical laws require face-to-face for prescribing and therefore can’t be used to its full potential to reduce pressure on GPs.

Currently, Tele-Health is only used for administration and educational purposes and is yet to be implemented for clinical purposes.

According to Steel, the entire Tele-Health system still needs a lot of work to become a sustainable health tool for patients and doctors.

“Tele-Health has a lot of potential, but there are so many issues with it at the moment that adoption has not been very good and there are more stories of failure than there are of success,” she said.

Despite the technological difficulties of implementation Steel still argues that e-Health will be necessary in the future.

“It’s something we have to look at because we know that there’s not enough health providers to deal with our growing and aging population, and if we cannot provide health services directly we need to look at other ways of doing it.”

Read more of e-Health coverage from Reportage Online – E-Health system raises privacy concerns.