Patient Medicine Records Should Be Included In eHealth Data

Medicines Australia has called on the Federal Government to make a patient’s medication records a mandatory inclusion in eHealth profiles to improve the safe use of medicines.

The option has been put in a submission to the Senate inquiry into the Government’s eHealth legislation which seeks to make changes to the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR).

Each year up to 230,000 hospitalisations are attributed to medication misadventure, many of which may be avoidable. Medicines Australia believes there is an opportunity to reduce these cases through better data collation, coordination and record access via the eHealth system.

The submission from the peak industry body says, “Optimising My Health Record to improve the recording, sharing and management of prescribed (and non-prescribed) medication will enable better monitoring of patients’ medication management through the primary care, hospital, aged care and pharmacy settings. This will in turn reduce duplication, missed or inappropriate prescribing and dispensing, overuse, misuse and abuse of medications.”

Medicines Australia supports the Bill, in particular the decision to enable trials of the proposed opt-out My Health Record system in a manner that retains the patient controls.

Medicines Australia believes an opt-out system will enable the My Health Record to provide better, more useful and usable information to healthcare practitioners, which will in turn lead to improved whole-of-care for patients.

The Medicines Australia submission is available here.

Contact:

James Boyce
Phone: 0423 239 265
Email: James.Boyce@medicinesaustralia.com.au