CSIRO Scientist Appointed Chair of Standards Australia
Telehealth Sub-Committee

e-Health Research Centre's Dr Anthony Maeder to play key role in health informatics
standards development
15 November 2006
Brisbane, Australia

The e-Health Research Centre's Research Director and Standards Australia IT-014 Health Informatics Committee member, Dr Anthony Maeder, was recently appointed to the role of Chair of the IT-014-12 Telehealth Sub-Committee.

This Sub-Committee is one of several underpinning the work of the IT-014 Health Informatics Committee, which develops national standards in health informatics that will support the sharing of information across the healthcare sector and align with international e-health developments.

"Telehealth has often been represented as merely teleconferencing or videoconferencing for health applications," said Dr Maeder. "In fact it covers a far wider scope than this, including many rapidly-emerging new areas of need in point-of-care or distributed healthcare such as patient monitoring and assessment, care team and care plan management, and multidisciplinary health decision processes. The task of the sub-committee will be to identify and advance some of these areas which have high strategic importance to the Australian Health system, given our current major issues with the burden of chronic disease, our ageing population, improving safety and quality, and limitations on facilities and workforce."

CSIRO through its ICT Centre and the e-Health Research Centre, a joint venture between CSIRO and the Queensland Government, has a wealth of expertise in major areas of health informatics which are key aspects in the broad international Telehealth scene, including patient monitoring, locally managed care and telepresence.

"The e-Health Research Centre leverages the current expertise of several major world-class initiatives including health data integration, medical imaging, and surgical simulation projects from the CSIRO ICT Centre", said Gary Morgan, CEO of the e-Health Research Centre. "We are uniquely positioned in the Health research domain to help shape the future directions in Australian Health ICT through involvement with peak industry and standards organisations such as Standards Australia."

IT-014 had developed 46 standards and related publications up to 30 June 2006, with one withdrawn and the other 45 still available. The list of available standards can be accessed at e-health.standards.org.au/drafts.asp?area=publications. The majority of standards and related publications produced by IT-014 are available free of charge via electronic download.

About the e-Health Research Centre

Established in 2003, the e-Health Research Centre is a leading national research facility in ICT for healthcare innovations. A joint venture between CSIRO and the Queensland Government, the e-Health Research Centre's Research Program aims to improve the quality and safety of healthcare for individuals and communities through an ICT research program focused on applied outcomes and active adoption by the health system.

About the Standards Australia IT-014 Health Informatics Committee

Standards Australia’s IT-014 Health Informatics Committee develops national standards in health informatics that will support the sharing of information across the health care sector and align with international e-health developments. Through these standards, Standards Australia has been able to respond to the health sector’s information needs and ensure a consolidated approach in areas such as electronic health records, health supply chain, messaging, terminology, representation of health concepts, client and provider identification. These standards will allow the exchange and longitudinal management of health information to support integrated clinical care, and are essential building blocks in the electronic health record environment.

The role of Standards Australia’s IT-014-012 Telehealth subcommittee will be to investigate the need for standardisation in this dynamic field, with a view to developing guidelines in future years.

www.e-health.standards.org.au