AIIA NSW Healthcare Briefing: Clinical safety in eHealth

Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Health Systems & Safety Research,
Australian Institute of Health Innovation

Melissa Baysari leads the ‘Electronic Decision Support and Human Factors in Healthcare’ stream within the Centre for Health Systems & Safety Research. Melissa has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles in Australian and international journals and books and secured over $6 million (AUD) in research funding in the area of health technology evaluation.

Melissa’s research has also resulted in several significant changes being made to the clinical information systems at St Vincent’s Hospital, as well as to hospital policy and work practices.

Director, eHealth & Medication Safety,
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare

Mr. Board heads the Commission eHealth and Medication Safety program. His team has conducted clinical safety assurance of the My Health Record since its inception, conducting safety and incident reviews. The group developed a clinical incident management framework for clinical information systems and has published literature reviews on medication safety, electronic medication management in hospitals, and health IT-related incident management.
The team at the Commission develops national medication charts designed to optimise safety in hospitals, medicines labeling standards, and national guidelines for on-screen presentation of medicines information and discharge summaries. His team developed three editions a guide to safe implementation of EMM in hospitals, and a cumulative antibiogram standard to support the national approach the antimicrobial stewardship.
Mr. Board is a registered nurse, a Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Informatics and an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University. He has worked in clinical, management, and informatics roles, including six years, managing primary care programs in the Brazilian Amazon. He also implemented radiotherapy information systems and Area-based clinical cancer registries in NSW.

A/General Manager, Safety & Quality Branch,
Australian Digital Health Agency

Rodney Ecclestone has experience in the health sector spanning clinical practice, senior management, clinical and biomedical research administration, commercialisation and safety leadership. He has held management positions in digital health at the national level for more than 10 years. Influenced through frontline experiences working clinically in the acute setting, he has a career long interest in safety and quality.

Since 2010 he has had responsibility for the development and maintenance of safety cases for key national digital health infrastructure, including the Healthcare Identifier Service and My Health Record. The clinical assurance function he leads applies systems safety engineering approaches as a part of a broader clinical governance framework.

Partner,
KPMG

In 2012, Jonathan Di Michiel was seconded to the eHealth NSW Electronic Medication Management (eMeds) Program to deliver the transformation of the scale and complexity involved in rolling out eMeds across the State. In that role, Jonathan’s priorities were to establish a sustainable model for the Program including effective engagement with the State’s ‘lead’ sites and local health districts, robust governance structures and a roadmap for delivery. He led a State-wide vendor procurement process and the development of the eMeds Reference Model – the system design ‘blueprint’ used as the core build for the State – is also a key achievement.

In 2016, Jonathan took on the leadership role of Program Director, eMR Connect, delivering a state-wide comprehensive electronic medical record (eMR). A major program of work is underway to introduce further eMR functionality into hospitals, including the eMeds program Jonathan was instrumental in establishing.  The ‘footprint’ of eMR Connect across NSW covers 178 hospitals, as well as more than 300 community health and outpatient care facilities.

Jonathan now works with clients across the Australian Health sector helping them navigate the new digital world to deliver safe and quality outcomes for patients, their families and clinicians.