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My Health Record (MHR)—the way to aid yourself in your health management, MHR is a secure online summary of an individual’s health information and is available to all Australians. Healthcare providers authorised by their healthcare organisation can access My Health Record to view and add to their patients’ health information.
From a healthcare professional standpoint, Important patient information will be available quickly and exactly when needed. However, this requires the patient to embrace the “My Health Record” platform and work closely with healthcare professionals, such as your GP, pharmacist, allied health provider, etc.
My Health Record is an Australian Government Initiative that essentially provides a technology-based platform that enables you—as an Australian Citizen or resident—to store your health-related details safely. This will lead to better information sharing between different sources, for example, between you, GPs, and hospitals.
Indian Support Center (ISC) is very seriously involved in embracing MHR. ISC has taken this very novel step to percolate the benefits of MHR to the broader Australian community by becoming a network partner with Good Things Foundation, which works very closely with the Australian Digital Health Agency.
MHR is a robust IT platform that provides a secure infrastructure for Australians ( Citizens and permanent residents) to store, retrieve, and manage their health data. This enables us to access our health data even outside Australia as long as internet access is available.
MHR enables you to store outcomes from your GP visit, store your medical imaging products, pharmacy prescription data, allied health data, pathology results, oral health information, etc. There is absolutely nothing that you would need to do to create your MHR record. However, it is your responsibility to populate and maintain your health record.
The process that underlies MHR is similar to your bank account, credit/debit card account, home loan account, etc. You must ensure the contents are correct once these things are set up for you.
Think about platforms such as train reservations, airline reservations, bus reservations, etc.
Various agencies give you the infrastructure to make your trip safe and happy. You can use it, and MHR is pretty similar to the above landscape.
As more people and healthcare organisations use the My Health Record system, Australia’s national health system will become better connected. You can contribute positively to this journey by being part and parcel of MHR to ensure that your health records are clean, current, and available on the MHR platform.
For decades, healthcare providers have relied heavily on technology like fax machines and postal letters to share critical patient information such as test results and referrals. However, the need of the hour is the timely availability of patient data to healthcare providers. When clinicians have convenient access to as much relevant patient information as possible—your health data—they can make better treatment decisions.
In subsequent issues, you will learn more about MHR—also called ‘My health way’ (MHW)—how the Indian Support Center is making steady contributions in this space, and what technology platforms are already embraced in the health sector—that is super hot. So, please stay tuned. Submitted by Dr Giridhar Tirumalai; ISC DHLP Tutor/Mentor.
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