Talking HealthTech: 337 – Digital health for now and the future. The AIDH Digital Health Summit ‘22

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A few weeks ago, Pete was at the ICC in Sydney at the AIDH Digital Health Summit, where they explored digital health advances in hospital and primary and community care from the frontline to the back office in metro, rural, and regional New South Wales. 

In this episode, you will hear the conversations Pete had with speakers who presented at the AIDH Digital Health Summit. Plus, he went out during the networking sessions and spoke to attendees to find out what they learnt from the sessions and what excites them about the future of digital health.

Thoughts from Attendees

“…connecting the disconnected ecosystem is a myth. It is a huge spider web. The opportunity it will provide is greater information and more informed patients…”

“The session with the students from Loreto Normanhurst was really inspiring. That was probably one of the most heartwarming moments I’ve seen…”

“…sometimes it’s not just that we share common passions, but we share common frustrations too at how hard it can be and how isolating it can feel…” 

Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA)

Dr Jen Bichel-Findlay is currently a healthcare consultant in the educational area of writing health informatics and digital health content for courses. She helped to explain CHIA.

Certified Health Informatician Australasia is a credentialing program and not an educational course. Its purpose is to give recognition to people who work in the area of health informatics but don’t have a degree or a master’s; however, they have many years of experience and lots of knowledge. CHIA provides professional recognition of the knowledge and skills that these individuals have. 

The CHIA program has six domains in a competency framework. The entire program then stems from that competency framework, which includes health sciences, information science, information technology, social and behavioural sciences, management and leadership and the biggest part of the framework course- health informatics. 

How Health Informatics Differs from General Health Tech

Because health informatics covers a lot of domains, you have to know about the IT side of things and the healthcare aspect as well. With health informatics, you are a conduit between the IT people who build systems and the clinicians who use the systems. Health informatics enables one to know health and how health works, such as what happens to consumers when they go through their health journey. It also gives you an understanding of the systems and how they are set up, and what they do so that you can explain to clinicians how to use them effectively and emphasise their benefits. 

Additionally, to get involved in health informatics, you don’t have to be a specific clinician or a software developer. You can come from various backgrounds (nurse, doctor, allied health professionals, technology project managers, pharmacists etc.) to find a home in health informatics. 

The Right Time to do CHIA

The best time to get involved in CHIA is when you have ninety uninterrupted days because once you register, the clock starts, and you will need to allocate time each week for self-paced study. The familiar areas of the program may not take much time; however, the unfamiliar areas tend to require a lot of effort and study time. 

In those ninety days, you will have two opportunities to sit the multiple choice exam, and it is recommended that you do the first sitting around week ten of the program because if you are unsuccessful, then you would still have two weeks to continue to study and go for your second attempt. 

The Ongoing Nature of CHIA

Once you pass the test, you become part of the CHIA alumni community. You also get access to the alumni newsletter that has up-to-date information about what’s happening in the space. There are also alumni-only activities held via webinars. 

Passing the test means you hold that credential for three years. So, every three years, you have to submit your journal through CPD points, and that gets you recertified for another three years. 

Those who want to learn more about becoming a part of CHIA can contact the Australian Institute of Digital Health by sending an email to certification@digitalhealth.org au. They can also head over to the career section of the AIDH website and look for CHIA. 

Data Inclusion Uptake Challenges for the Indigenous

Luke Briscoe is a proud Kuku-Yalanji man from Far North Queensland. Luke has experience in the creative industries, digital communication, project management, community, international policy and cultural development. Luke founded the award winning company INDIGI LAB to create  innovative projects and STEM initiatives for social and environmental change.

During the summit, Luke spoke about data inclusion uptake challenges for indigenous peoples and getting more youths involved in going to medical services and getting assessments. But what they found is that not only in Australia but also overseas, the youth are more comfortable using avatars and games to get their health and well-being assessments. 

This is alarming because it shows that there is still systemic racism in medical service, which creates a barrier for indigenous peoples to simply visit a medical service for a check-up.  

Equity of Technology and Equity in Healthcare

COVID-19 triggered a lot of important policy discussions around health equity. But for people from the indigenous communities that were living in some of the urban areas, the lack of access to technology or even just basic WiFi prevented them from communicating with family back home. As such, there was a disconnection from their country and culture. 

In essence, there needs to be a policy that considers both tech and health equity. 

Making Tech Solutions Inclusive and Accessible to the Indigenous Community 

If you look at the indigenous estate in terms of health and well-being projects that might impact the community, it is important to understand that indigenous peoples have a right space approach relating to tech and health equity. Therefore, it is important to use mechanisms like the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Also, some services might have reconciliation action plans in place to ensure that the community is engaged in all aspects.

Luke’s approach can be used as an example, as the projects he developed as an indigenous cultural practitioner have him going into communities and developing indigenous cultural indicators. These are meant to help with understanding community perspective- what their needs and wants are to ensure that there is reciprocity.

The Health Tech Needs of the Indigenous Community 

The indigenous communities are very broad, with some located in the city area, and a lot of the community people might live in remote areas. So, they have very different needs, and that’s important for policymakers and people working in startups to think about as well because it’s really hard to go back once you’ve actually developed something that is targeting one group rather than looking at the different nation groups.

Indigenous peoples have not been treated well at all, particularly in health services, and it’s crucial if we are moving forward as a nation in the digital economy, to think about indigenous peoples as important key stakeholders when it comes to policy planning around digital data sovereignty. 

Thoughts from Attendees

“We as a business are trying to engage with New South Wales Health and those kinds of organisations. So, for us, this is really good information gathering and making great contacts…” 

“Digital health plays a massive part in innovation in healthcare and improving the customer experience, which is what we want…the aged care piece was really interesting. There’s so much work that needs to be done in aged care innovation, especially around dementia and falls and just understanding how to make fewer resources go further.”

The Women in Digital Health Leadership Program

Exploring the women in digital health leadership program are Dr Annie Banbury, the head of clinical research at Coviu Global, the Virtual Engagement Pro platform, Tracey De Angelis, who is an associate partner at Ernst & Young in Queensland and Claire Kelly, a clinical audit coordinator for Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service.

This is the inaugural year of the program run by the Australian Institute of Digital Health. It is based on an American program for women in digital health and is meant to help cultivate and support both existing digital health leaders and those who are emerging. The program covers areas like self-awareness, how to support culture, how to team and how to support each other. 

Does Diversity Help?

Similar to this panel, the women who are a part of the program come from a range of backgrounds with varying roles, and this certainly helped. Each woman is there for a different reason, and since digital health is very much about diversity and the backgrounds they all come from, it can bring about a sense of belonging. Not being in an identified leadership or hierarchical management role and understanding what leadership is versus what a manager is can be quite valuable.

Key Learnings from the Program

One of the most essential lessons from this program is the importance of connecting with and developing a network of women in digital health. The participants went on a journey together, creating bonds and learning about the operation of both public and private organisations. 

As the women shared their experiences, others could relate and understand that though they are from different backgrounds etc., they were facing similar challenges. 

How Men in Leadership can Support Women 

It is always important to focus on the person and not the gender. Also, women in certain work environments find it harder to juggle family commitments; therefore, being aware of flexible work environments and flexible ways of working would be quite useful. In addition, understanding individuals, what they value and the diversity that is in the workplace is key.

Another thing to remember is that there is masculine energy and there is feminine energy, and they bring a different style of operating. As such, men and women value different things. When you actually start to see and understand that this might be creating biases, then stop yourself and start to understand that person better, you will work more harmoniously together and you will also start to elevate them.

Men in leadership should also look at the value proposition- why do we want more women in leadership? Digital health is a really broad church, and if we don’t have a broad representation at the table, bringing their experiences, then we’re not truly optimising everything that we have as a nation.

Advice for Women 

If you are looking to become impactful within a leadership position or even just within a career that you are passionate about, don’t be afraid to put your application in for the program. It doesn’t matter what stage of your career you are, the program will either provide refreshers or different perspectives, but it’s all valuable. Plus, it is imperative that you take time out for yourself to think about where you are, who you are and what you want out of your digital health career.

Shifting the Dial

Khaled Chakli is the Director of Leadership and Policy at the Institute of Digital Health. Currently, the institute is working to build and refine a strategy for leadership and policy that provides scope around what the priorities are for the institute, what they would like to produce policy outputs and what they would like to advocate to the government on. This helps the institute with prioritising a very long list of things that they could be working on. 

So, in comes Shifting the Dial, a strategy with three pillars.

1.  Changing the business models of healthcare

2.  Advancing the digital health work

3. Building trust and confidence in health and data.

Under each of those pillars are three focus areas that they hope activity in would shift the dial towards changing the business models of healthcare and advance Australia’s transition into a digital health future. 

Selecting the Three Pillars for Shifting the Dial

The institute held a series of workshops and consultations and spoke to members with the aim of determining what they needed to do if they wanted to achieve a fully digitally enabled healthcare sector in fifteen years. As a result, quite a few business models came up, and these business models focused on, on the one hand, the way health systems are funded and structured and, on the other hand, how healthcare is delivered to patients in a manner that is patient-centric. 

The second pillar, advancing the digital health workforce, speaks for itself. The country has a very strained healthcare workforce, and digital enablement has proven to increase efficiencies and productivity and eases the pressure. In addition, the source of investments the institute could make in digital to ease the pressure that they have on them is something that the government could be very receptive to hearing about. 

The third one looks at building trust and confidence in health and data, and that focuses on the trust that people place in the health system. It also addresses interoperability, connected care and the rights of the patients to own their data that they are handing over to clinicians.

The AIDH and the Three Pillars

As a member of the AIDH, a lot of the content and the events and the activities happening day-to-day within the institute are guided towards all of these principles. This is even evident with this AIDH Summit being organised around those three pillars. Therefore, much of the content being disseminated and learnt is geared toward shifting the dial on digital health in Australia.

Furthermore, the institute has formed expert advisory groups (EAG) that are meant to address each of the three pillars. With the EEGs, the institute can look beyond the fellowship and membership of the AIDH to draw on the expertise across the health, business, technology and digital sectors.

The Future

If Shifting the Dial is successful, digital becomes so ingrained in the enablement and the delivery of healthcare that it is just business as usual, which means no more reference to digital health. Instead, we’ll all just say healthcare. 

Thoughts from Attendees

“the future of health is digital, so we’re in a transition phase where digital is a focus, yet we’re moving towards it being one of those things that happen in health.”

“How do we build that capability? How do we keep and make everyone interested in what digital health can and is doing at the moment?”

“There is a real melting pot and a collective vibe here going on today that I haven’t seen for a while.”

The Story of Dr Ben

Dr Ben Bravery is a junior doctor in New South Wales. A few years ago, he had bowel cancer and having been introduced to the healthcare industry as a patient first, there were key points of that journey where Ben felt a lot of mistrust. His story and aspects of trust and mistrust that he shared resonated with the summit’s audience. 

Building Trust 

In medical school, students are taught very factual things. What’s not taught is the human element, such as compassion, communication, empathy and respect. People are selected to get into medical school on grades, and that is important, but it is not the full story. It is expected that because you are a person, you can do it. But what we know about medical training is that those interpersonal skills erode as your factual knowledge grows. Ben is focused on protecting and rewarding that, which is necessary in education and practice.

Valuing those Soft Interpersonal Skills

The first part is opening up the doors of medical school to a range of backgrounds and lived experiences. The next thing is to include patients in the education and allow them in the physical space to lecture so that students can hear from the ill about illness. This approach will give students a whole new perspective on illnesses to anchor their textbook knowledge to. 

Incentivising these skills and using real-time feedback is another way to show value to these soft skills. Also, there will be lots of technology that plays an important role, but they have to be built on human principles. 

The Big Picture vs. Benefiting the Workforce

Dan McInerney is a partner at PwC. 

This issue of balance is one that PwC has to address every day in terms of what they do as a business. PwC is well-known for strategy, vision and program planning, but they now realise that they have to diversify their own businesses and provide practical skills and services back into the sector.

This and a plethora of different themes came out in the summit conversations. The sector, in general, is sitting on so much data that needs to be converted into real-time insights to make immediate action around policy and protocol. But importantly, put that in front of the patient so they get a real outcome instantly.

We must consider how we can help those healthcare professionals who might be facing burnout and want to try another industry. Systems should be in place to help them upskill and move into another area of healthcare.

Thoughts from Attendees 

“I think what has come to the forefront today was this desire from all of those partners to actually work together…”

“Coming to the forefront…the need to produce systems that work well with other systems and talk to each other- interoperability….

The Role of Technology in the Aged Care Workforce

Speaking about tech in aged care is George Margelis, who is the chair of the Aged Care Industry Information Technology Council. The aged care workforce is under severe challenge, and this includes both the care delivery workforce and the technology delivery workforce. One way technology can assist is by providing them with solutions that enable them to focus on their key job around providing care and automate those tasks that can be automated and remove some of those tasks that are currently stopping them from delivering high quality.

Is there Evidence of Change?

Though there is a lot of talk, there are many companies that make great examples of how they are addressing the issues of technology in aged care. The sector is starting to see more consumer utilisation taking shape with simple things like Alexa and WiFi-connected lights that we didn’t have access to twenty years ago. 

If you enjoyed this episode, then you’ll love MedInfo 2023: The 19th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics will be presented by AIDH happening in Sydney this year, featuring lots of digital health leaders and clinicians from around the world.

_{Source talkinghealthtech.com}