MANILA, Philippines - Pointwest Technologies Corp., a leading Filipino-owned IT and business process management (BPM) firm, participated in the Healthcare Information and Management System Society (HIMSS) Australia Conference 2014 held recently in Sydney, in conjunction with the mHealth Summit AsiaPac.
The conference opened with a keynote address by Australian Health Minister Peter Dutton. The Australian government had just released its new and rather controversial budget that calls for major cuts to domestic spending, including healthcare cuts.
Dutton announced his support for a major policy change wherein an “opt-out†approach will be used for the nation’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), 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 one 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 and BPM provider in the healthcare sector, Philippine-based Pointwest Technologies is at the forefront of helping organizations 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 past 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 in the Philippines.
Pointwest’s experiences in providing services to major companies have boosted its 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, chief information officer of NSW Health, part of the New South Wales state government, who presented an overview of the implementation of eHealth in the state, which includes Sydney. The state has made a major financial commitment to eHealth and is quite advanced in its deployment.
Dr. Christopher Warden, managing director of healthcare strategy and innovation practice for PwC Global, presented a vision of how social, mobile, analytics and cloud and digital healthcare are 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 HIMSS based in Chicago in the United States, with support from the Department of Health of the Australian government, the New South Wales 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 to enhanced care coordination, improved healthcare outcomes, and a more engaged healthcare consumer.