Opening Remarks by Mr. Howard C Dickson, Government Chief Information Officer, at the eHealth Forum
15 - 09 - 2006
Welcome to this exciting forum and thank you for the opportunity to offer some
opening remarks.
I would like to preface my remarks by observing as an outsider and new-comer
that Hong Kong has an incredibly accessible healthcare system from my perspective
as an occasional patient. I treasure having both a public and a private sector
and the practical ability to get a second opinion is not something I have experienced
before. We have to be careful that we don't move from a flawed system that works
to a perfect system that doesn't!
Of all the change opportunities I have seen in a 40 year career, the multiple
dimensions of health care make it the most fascinating.
Healthcare by its very nature requires a broad range of services to be made
available in different geographies over the full span of a lifetime. No one
person or facility can provide this but all are helped, not least the patient,
if timely, accurate information is readily available having followed the patient
in cyber-space when they are finally seen by the overworked specialist physician.
Along the way I have seen successive businesses and governments realize that
immediate interactive communications supported by reliable, consistent, appropriately
presented information at the point of action enables sea changes in their effectiveness,
customer service, and their ability to understand and influence costs.
As in all major societal changes, the stakeholders are numerous, the concerns
deep and the early benefits of eHealth will not initially compensate the investments,
difficulties and frustrations. But from my perspective, not only is the world
becoming a network, the ability to confidently sustain and responsibly share
information will be our next digital challenge to overcome.
Hong Kong is very well positioned with the Hospital Authority's ePatient Record
System that reaches 50% of all health action including virtually all in-patient
care. In addition Hong Kong has an excellent biometrically based identity card
system that will be a vital component in enabling secure and private access
to health records.
Every business I have served has had first class reasons for investing in ICT
but also numerous detractors wanting to either avoid or defer such change. The
positive reasons are that immediate information availability at every point
of action enables the society to move on beyond the endless paper trails and
staffing hand-offs that the paper world perpetuates. The negative concerns require
patience and demonstration that issues such as privacy and security are very
important risks than can be managed.
The change toward eHealth will continue to require enormous energy, patience
and careful implementation that balances risks with the prospect of more effective
and affordable healthcare.
We owe our citizens no less.
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