Health Systems Of The Future

Addressing challenges and creating opportunities for
the future of the WA health system

Existing conventional health care services face many challenges, including burgeoning demand created by an ageing population in conjunction with an increasing chronic disease burden. At the same time consumer expectations are rising whilst a large and growing percentage of the health workforce is reaching retirement age.

It is abundantly clear that within a very few years new innovative healthcare arrangements, enabled by pervasive information and communications technologies, will need to be in place.

During the past forty years, since the advent of computing systems in hospitals, it has become apparent that there are many issues which impede the successful adoption and use of information processing technologies in the healthcare sector.

If we are to develop improved health outcomes we need to quickly address these issues so that significant progress may be made in introducing sustainable healthcare systems.

At the HITWA 2012 Conference, held in October 2012 in Perth, a participative workshop was held to engage conference delegates in discussing their views about the strengths and weaknesses of the current health system in Western Australia and to offer their views on the key actions which need to be taken to secure improvements.

A Thought Leadership paper was written which summarises the proceedings of the workshop and provides some key perspectives on how the sector can collectively work together, within collaborative frameworks, to both address current barriers and introduce fast-tracked successful solutions to build on existing strengths.

Nigel Chartres, facilitator of the HITWA workshop and drafted the Thought Leadership paper, will provide an overview of the views expressed by delegates at HITWA.

Dr Andy Robertson, Acting CIO of the Department of Health in Western Australia, will then lead a discussion about how we travel into the future on these issues.