There’s a lot of resistance to change when Electronic medical records of any type are introduced. How the state governments don’t mandate one provider within the state I do not understand. Having 2 or 3 providers is an avoidable nightmare for someone supervising doctors moving between hospitals and who works at multiple hospitals with different systems. Patient safety too given the likelihood of errors must rise with a lack of familiarity Not that relevant for investment advice I know just triggering thinking how EMR could be done better in Australia

@GazD your post triggered 2 thoughts.

Firstly, being a SAP ERP systems guy in my past life, I think of big ERP systems in terms of one organisation and how hard it is to deploy a new integrated system like SAP in that one organisation. I did not consider the added issue of doctors moving between hospitals and having to work on different EMR/EPR systems and all the risks and challenges of that.

Secondly, I came across commentary of a failed UK Government initiative 10-15 years ago where they wasted a tonne of money commissioning DXC Technologies to build and deploy the EPR system called "Lorenzo". That flopped over time and the NHS Trusts that implemented Lorenzo seem to be getting out of it. So superficially, it seems that the mandating one system approach appears to have been tried but failed, despite having it funded and driven by the Govt.

Don't think we will ever see Govts mandating industry-wide systems beyond basic infrastructure like networks, MS-Office, Security - its just too hard, politically, operationally and financially. It will then be left to the likes of industry-centric software leaders to do that standardising eg. WTC in Cargo, SDR in small hotels/distribution. Don't believe there is this single dominant player in healthcare, so our little ALC will have to battle it out with all the other players ...

@jcmleng, re the issue of doctor mobility and errors, I'm old enough to remember the introduction of a standardised national paper medication chart sometime in.... not 1994 or 1984....... but 2004. And there was huge resistance to that minor (major?) change.

A full EMR is a huge implementation.

It's generally not the junior doctors, nursing or allied health that object - it's the seniors who have built systems upon legacy systems that struggle to adapt.

I take your points @jcmleng but my understanding is Lorenzo was a bespoke system designed prospectively rather than a product of competitive industry. Either of epic or Cerner EMR would work fine throughout Victoria (IMO) and both are being used. I just don’t know why we couldn’t provide a tender for the state rather than hospital by hospital