At the forefront of helping organizations implement digital healthcare initiatives, Pointwest Technologies Corporation, a Filipino-owned IT and business process management firm, sees growth opportunities in Australia as the country moves to accelerate the pace of adoption of healthcare technology.
The company participated in the Healthcare Information and Management System Society (HIMSS) Australia Conference 2014 held recently in Sydney, in conjunction with the mHealth Summit, AsiaPac.
Dutton announced his support for a major policy change wherein an “opt-out” approach will be used for the nation’s (PCEHR) Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record, rather than the current “opt-in” approach that relies on Australians to sign up online for an account before their health records can be shared among health practitioners. To date, the opt-in approach has resulted in only 1 out of 15 Australian’s signing up. Widespread use of the PCEHR is expected to lead to better healthcare efficiencies, which could help mitigate the impact of budget cuts.
As a leading IT/BPM provider in the healthcare sector, Philippine-based Pointwest Technologies is at the forefront of helping organizations to implement Digital Healthcare initiatives and sees growth opportunities in Australia as the country moves to accelerate the pace of adoption of healthcare technology, such as the PCEHR. Pointwest was represented in the HIMSS Australia Conference 2014 by Rhea Latoga, Mark Zavalla and Colin Christie.
In the last 11 years, Pointwest has provided first-in-class IT and BPM services to top Fortune 500 companies, as well as leading companies of various industries here in the Philippines. The company’s experiences in providing services to major companies have boosted Pointwest’s best-of-breed application development services, independent software testing services, and production and help desk support in the transportation and logistics, healthcare, financial, utilities and retail verticals.
Other featured speakers during the conference included Fiona Wilson, A/Chief Information Officer of NSW Health, part of the New South Wales (NSW) state government, who presented an impressive overview of the implementation of eHealth in the state of NSW, which includes Sydney. The state has made a major financial commitment to eHealth and is already quite advanced in its deployment. Dr. Christopher Warden, Managing Director of Healthcare Strategy and Innovation Practice for PwC Global presented a vision of how SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) and Digital Healthcare is transforming healthcare in both developed and emerging markets. He envisions a shift to consumer-centric decision making, powered by mobile apps and better access to information.
The conference was organized by HIMSS Asia Pacific, part of the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), based in Chicago in the USA, with support by the Department of Health of the Australian Government, the New South Wales (NSW) State Government through its eHealth initiative, the Victoria State Government, the Tasmanian Government and the Australian TeleHealth Society.
The Healthcare sector in Australia, and indeed throughout the world, faces significant challenges as rising costs and aging populations put strains on affordability. Digital Healthcare presents a hopeful solution that can lead not only to better cost efficiencies, but also enhanced care coordination, improved healthcare outcomes and a more engaged healthcare consumer.
