INTERNATIONAL

PERSPECTIVE
Earliest use of computation for health was for Dental Health
projects (1950) at the US National Bureau of Standards
by Robert Ledley
Informatics
Around the World
UNITED STATES OF
Commercial vendors began to market practice AMERICA
management and electronic medical records systems
(1970s).

Homer R. Warner founded the Department of Medical

Informatics at the University of Utah (1968), and the
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) has
an award named after him on application of informatics
to medicine.
1996 Health
HIPAA of 1996 created Informatics
the impetus for large
numbers of physicians to
Around the World
move towards using EMR
software primarily for the UNITED STATES OF
purpose of secure
medical billing. AMERICA

US Department of Health
and Human Services
(HHS) formed the Office
of the National
Coordinator for Health
Information Technology
(ONCHIT)

2004
 Health
2005
Informatics
Certification Commission for Around the World
Healthcare Information
Technology (CCHIT) was
funded by the U.S. UNITED STATES OF
Department of Health and
Human Services AMERICA

CCHIT released its first

list of 22 certified
ambulatory EHR
products, in two
different
announcements

July 2006
 Health Informatics Around the World
EUROPE ◦ European Union’s Member States are committed to
sharing their best practices and experiences to create a
European eHealth Area
◦ European eHealth Action Plan plays a fundamental role in
the European Union’s strategy
◦ European Institute for Health Records is involved in the
promotion of high-quality Electronic Health Record
systems in the European Union
◦ European Commission's preference, as exemplified in the
5th Framework, is for Free/Libre and Open Source Software
(FLOSS) for healthcare
◦ United Kingdom (UK)
◦ Formation of the UK Council for Health Informatics
Professions (UKCHIP)
 Health Informatics Around the World
EUROPE ◦ England
◦ NHS contracted out a National Informatics System ‘NPFIT’
◦ Divides country into 5 regions and united by a central electronic
medical record system (The Spine)
◦ 2006
◦ 60% of residents in England and Wales have more or less
extensive clinical records and their prescriptions generated on
4000 installations of one system (EMIS) written in ‘M’.
◦ 40 % predominantly have records stored on assorted SQL or file-
based systems.
◦ Scotland
◦ More advanced than the English one
◦ GPASS system whose source code is owned by the State,
and controlled and developed by NHS Scotland
◦ Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics
(APAMI) was established in 1994 and consists of
Health
more than 15 member regions in the Asia Pacific
Region
Informatics
Around the World
◦ Hongkong
◦ Clinical Management System (CMS) has been ASIA
developed by the Hospital Authority since 1994
◦ Deployed in 40 hospitals and 120 clinics
◦ Used by all 30,000 clinical staff on a daily basis
with daily transactions of up to 2 millions
◦ Comprehensive records of 7 million patients are
available online in the Electronic Patient Record
(ePR) with data integrated from all sites
◦ Radiology image viewing has been added to the
ePR (2004)
◦ China
◦ Health Information Technology is now entering its Health
2nd software generation and IT usage in hospitals
resembles that of the late 1970s in the US
Informatics
◦ Most hospitals incorporate IT software into their
Around the World
payment and billing and many have integrated IT ASIA
into clinical systems in the past 5 years
◦ Use of IT in clinical systems has emerged on a
departmental basis
◦ Hospitals encountered several obstacles:
◦ Fragmentation
◦ Duplicative systems
◦ Poor integration between diverse software systems
have created “information islands” that impede data
sharing
Australian College of Health Informatics (ACHI)
was formed as a professional association and
peak health informatics professional body (2002) Health
• Represents the interests of a broad range of clinical and non- Informatics
clinical professionals working within the Health Informatics
sphere through a commitment to quality, standards and ethical
Around the World
practice
• Works to enhance the national capacity in health informatics in AUSTRALIA
research, education and training, policy and system
implementation

Health Informatics Society of Australia Ltd (HISA)

• Major umbrella group and a member of the International

Medical Informatics Association (IMIA)
• Membership comes from across the informatics spectrum
(students to corporate affiliates)
• Branches: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western
Australia
• Special interest groups: Nursing (NIA), pathology, aged and
community care, industry and medical imaging
 1990 September 2000
Nursing Informatics New Health Informatics New
Health
Zealand (NINZ) was originally Zealand (HINZ) emerged from Informatics
formed 2 health informatics
organization: NINZ and NZHiF Around the World
NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Health

Informatics Foundation (NZHiF)
was formed

1994

New Zealand Health IT Cluster

• An alliance of organizations interested in health IT
(software and solution developers, consultants, health
policy makers, health funders, infrastructure companies,
healthcare providers, and academic institutions) who
have agreed to work collaboratively
THANK YOU!