EADING medical researchers say lives will be saved if information on suspected and confirmed cases of swine flu is immediately available through a national e-health system.
"One of the keys to protecting the public is finding out who is sick, who is healthy, who has died, and where they live, work, shop or go to school," director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Fiona Stanley, said.
"We also need to know who has been admitted to hospital, how long they've stayed and what medicines have been prescribed by which pharmacies. This would allow for efficient monitoring and a co-ordinated response to the pandemic. Lives would most certainly be saved."
Professor Stanley, and visiting professor at the University of Western Australia and director of the Indiana University Centre for Bioethics Eric Meslin, said Australia had "every reason to fast-track" e-health, and not just because of swine flu.
"If we had complete population data, individual health would improve as personal health records would ensure medical histories, prescriptions, test results and hospital results were accurately kept and available to healthcare providers," they told The Australian.
"Overall community health would also improve due to the unprecedented capacity to examine trends in disease and the effectiveness of health services and treatments."
Professor Meslin said US President Barack Obama had committed billions of dollars to "converting paper-based medical records" to electronic systems, and conducting "comparative effectiveness studies" of drugs.
