Oliver Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've been pointed to: > > http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,21848256-15317,00.html > > E-health standards advance > > Karen Dearne | June 05, 2007 > ... > Meanwhile, NEHTA clinical product design manager Kate Ebrill said the > draft medications terminology for health messaging created by HL7 > Australia and the MSIA for the federal Health Department in 2004 (to > support basic clinical communications) was being further developed as an > extension to SNOMED CT. > > "A lot of the work we're doing is focused on taking that model and > looking at what is required to make that sustainable, quality assured > and deliverable in Australia," she said. > > "We're also trying to co-ordinate various inputs around the Therapeutic > Goods Administration and the PBS." > > Ms Ebrill said the model was initially intended to provide a terminology > for health messaging, but "it could also be used in e-prescribing and > dispensing applications, as well as shared electronic health records". > > "We're developing a whole lot of products that will actually support > health messaging, and terminologies is just one component of that," she > said.
Hold on.... "draft medications terminology for health messaging created by HL7 Australia and the MSIA for the federal Health Department in 2004"... "being further developed as an extension to SNOMED CT. " So, 3 years later, a national medications terminology is *still* being developed? A completely fundamental building-block of clinical communications! I don't have any problem with NEHTA doing further work on a national medications terminology in order to integrate it with SNOMED CT, or with NEHTA aligning inputs from the TGA and PBS, whatever that means. But is NEHTA saying that the 2004 medications terminology was so crappy that it was unusable? Is that the message? So crappy that it was better for people to use no medication terminology for the last three years, or to just make up their own idiosyncratic medications lists and codes. Really? I think this illustrates a fundamental problem in health informatics - that some future, perfect "goal state" continually triumphs over the Good Enough For Now. What people need to realise is that there is no Promised Land, and that health informatics involves a continuous journey of change and improvement, and therefore it makes no sense to delay the deployment of the Good Enough, now, in anticipation of the Much Better, at some time in the future. Let's have Good Enough, now, *and* Better, in the future. They are not mutually exclusive. I've also observed that software and software deployments are treated like stone monuments, carefully built, over-engineered very often, as if they will have to last for decades. They won't, it's all fleeting and epheremeral, gals and guys, today's cutting edge software is tomorrow's MS-DOS V1.0. So just get on with it - sure, keep an eye on the long-term future but don't forget benefits to be had in the less-than-perfect-but better-than-no! w short- and medium-term future. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
