Pillar 3: Strengthening our virtual care enablers

Context

Healthcare digitisation improves the quality, safety, effectiveness and acceptability of care. It provides secure record access to support clinical decision making, enables monitoring and analytics, generates prompts and clinical decision supports, and underpins secure record sharing. Consumer access to their own health information, self-monitoring and self-booking are wholly dependent on the digitisation of care processes.

Digitisation supports both in-person and virtual care by enabling public health agencies to securely share consumer health information for care provision. Victoria’s digital health roadmap (the Roadmap) sets out how digital health investments meet the needs of Victorians, and lift digital maturity across the health system.

It comprises programs of work that are improving in-person and virtual care outcomes by digitising and connecting the care journey.

Commitment: Deliver and operate statewide infrastructure

Actions

1. Operate a secure, fast wide area network
2. Provide advanced cybersecurity tools to health services.
3. Monitor and uplift ageing hardware and infrastructure*
4. Roll out and advanced disaster recovery service *
5. Provide a video call platform to the sector *

* delivered through Victoria’s Digital Health Roadmap

Responsibility: Department of Health

Commitment: Facilitate electronic patient record systems and secure sharing of health information

Actions*

1. Support health services to digitise core processes.
2. Enable unique identifiers for Victorian patients.
3. Connect and present records to clinical teams.
4. Connect all acute and community health services to My Health Record.

* delivered through Victoria’s Digital Health Roadmap

Responsibility: Department of Health

Commitment: Give Victorians access to their own health information

Actions

1. Work with clinical communities and health services to target groups who can benefit from apps that allow effective, secure self-monitoring.

Responsibility: Department of Health

Commitment: Develop reporting and funding models for virtual care models

Actions

1. Improve data collection to evaluate benefits and improve policy development that ensures financially sustainability.
2. Invest in new virtual care models.
3. Adopt a long-term viewpoint of realising financial benefits.
4. Engage with the Independent Hospital and Aged Care Pricing Authority on improvements to the national pricing model to account for innovative, effective and financially sustainable care models incorporating virtual care.

Responsibility: Department of Health