New South Wales hospitals have received a AU$4 million grant to deploy an e-health system to diagnose patients over broadband.
Medical staff in the Greater Southern Region will soon be able to take advantage of a remote diagnosis system after receiving a funding boost of more than AU$2 million from each of the federal and New South Wales administrations.
The grant comes as part of the government's Clever Networks program, a AU$113 million project to improve public services using broadband.
The remote diagnosis plan will see the Electronic Medical Records (EMR), the combined Picture Archiving and Communication and Radiology Information System (PACS/RIS) and remote clinical monitoring (Mediview) all upgraded to allow a medical staff including doctors and physiotherapists to access and share patients records and case notes over broadband.
The RIS overhaul will see traditional film-based cameras replaced with digital image capture technology, while an IP system and two-way cameras will be introduced to Mediview to enable clinicians to collaboratively assess cases regardless of distance.
Patients in remote areas will be able to attend their local health facility and be diagnosed remotely by doctors in other areas, who will be able to access patients' scans and X-rays using the Internet-enabled system.
As part of the scheme, the infrastructure of 45 public hospitals and health sites in the Greater Southern Area Health Service area, which covers 166,000 square km, will be updated to take advantage of the e-health system.
