What My Health Record & HealthConnect will mean for you as a dermal clinician and how to prepare now

Have you noticed that healthcare delivery is changing?

Digital Health is Here: What Dermal Clinicians Need to Know Now.

Our patients are coming to appointments more informed having already used AI tools to research and understand their symptoms, medical conditions or skin problems. They are generally more digitally engaged interacting with or even accessing information through shared health records, and online platforms.

At the same time our health care system is moving toward an increasingly connected framework of delivering health that values collaborative care and decision making that is supported by accessible data.

Perhaps you have noticed this shift yourself. Have you accessed any of these yet?

• Telehealth medical appointments

• Online scripting, e-prescriptions or tokens

• Online services for medical certificate

Or perhaps you have registered for My Health Record and can now access

• Your immunisation history

• Pathology and diagnostic imaging reports

• Allergies

• Medications (Medicare/PBS information)

• Hospital discharge information

• Specialist letters

For dermal clinicians, this time of digital uplift creates both a challenge and an opportunity.

Historically, dermal practice has been situated outside the formal healthcare systems and communication channels. But that is changing.

What Do We Mean By Digital Health?

Digital health is a very broad term encompassing a lot of things, but at its core and what we are talking about in this blog is how technology is used to store, share and support health information.

This includes:

• Electronic health records

• Secure data sharing between providers

• Telehealth and remote consultations

• Standardised clinical coding systems

If you aren't familiar with these terms yet, don't worry you will hear more about it in the coming years and of course if you follow along with me, I'll also bring you along on this journey.

Now is a good time to increase your knowledge, start building your confidence and prepare for change. You don't need to be a tech expert, you just need the understanding to be safe and ready to integrate as these systems evolve.

Skin conditions rarely exist in isolation. As we know skin problems and diseases are inextricably linked to all systems of the body and are often an indicator of overall health as well as underlying disease. Even skin conditions once thought to manifest in the skin are now being understood to have systemic implications and many also sit alongside medical care as well as dermal therapy care. With this we are seeing a shift as health professionals and patients need and expect collaborative and team based care plans. Dermal Clinicians need to be able to 'plug into' systems that support this.

To do this our profession needs structure, a shared clinical language and visibility.

What is My Health Record and What Relevance Does it Have for Dermal Clinicians?

One of the central components of Australia's digital health system is My Health Record.

This is a national system that allows certain key information to be stored and shared securely between health care providers as well as accessed by the patient themselves.

For dermal clinicians, this opens up important possibilities.

Depending on your role, whether you are registered to access these services, your software and how the profession continues to be integrated you may be able to access clinically relevant information such as:

• Medication histories

• Allergies

• Broader health context that may influence skin health and skin treatments.

As one of the emerging allied health professions identified to be integrated and access these services, over time there is also the potential to contribute to the record in meaningful ways to support patient care. This may be treatment summaries and relevant clinical observations.

Even while full participation is not standard or even possible, understanding how My Health Record functions is an important step towards future readiness.

HealthConnect its going to be more than just a Directory.

Alongside My Health Record, there are broader initiatives such as HealthConnect that focus on improving communication and information sharing across the entire healthcare system.

The goal is simple in theory but will be significant in practice; reduce fragmentation and silos and enable health care providers to work using the same information rather than in isolation.

What is HealthConnect?

Well its actually a lot of things, or rather bringing together a lot of things that currently are either very fragmented and don't talk to each other or don't yet exist.

At the moment there are the following systems that sit in isolation

• My Health Record

• National Directory for consumers - where you can find a health professional

• AHPRA registered practitioner directory

• Self regulating allied health professions directories

What's coming?

During my participation in the very early work to have dermal clinicians identified for integration into these systems it was explained to me that HealthConnect would be a place where you could find every health professional in Australia, know what they do and what they specialise in. It would be a place for consumers to find a practitioner but also a place for health professionals to find each other, use real time secure messaging, manage referrals and share information securely.

The HealthConnect Provider Directory: Provider Connect Australia is a place where health care professionals and organisations can update their business information as a single source.

For dermal clinicians, this is where things become even more interesting and relevant.

There is going to be work to:

• Integrate allied health into digital health frameworks,

• Ensure emerging professions are recognised within these systems

• Support the development of infrastructure that allows for active and meaningful participation.

However, inclusion is not automatic.

For any profession to be integrated into digital health systems, it needs to be clearly defined, consistently documented, evaluated and able to communicate within the same frameworks as other health care providers.

This means the profession needs to be 'Visible' in a system that runs on 'Structured' data.

I know what you are asking AND YES dermal clinicians have been identified for integration into HealthConnect as part of the body work of the Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians have contributed on the digital health project but it's still a work in progress.

However, having a qualification as a dermal clinician alone isn't going to be enough to provide you access. You are going to have to registered with a professional organisation that has been evaluated against legislative requirements and approved by Services Australia. More on this later...(keep reading) and what it means for you to be ready and the profession prepares as well.

Why Language is going to Matter: SNOMED Codes

One of the less sexy but critically important aspects of digital health is the use of shared language. This is standardised clinical terminology and clinical coding.

Within systems like HealthConnect the services that dermal clinicians provide need to be mapped against codes used to categorise clinical information so that different systems, providers and disciplines have a shared language and can understand each other. This is where SNOMED CT comes in.

SNOMED is a structured system used globally to code clinical information in a consistent way.

Again as part of my early work with with the Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians was working with the digital Health Project team to identify which existing SNOMED codes could accurately represent what we do and in what situations do we need entirely new SNOMED codes to be created. Which is a bit of a (slow) process but will be very worthwhile.

For dermal clinicians, the development of relevant SNOMED codes isn't just powerful for you as a individual practitioner it has a significant impact for us being visible and recognised nationally and globally. This will be a big step forward.

What will it mean:

• Treatments can be formally recognised within healthcare systems

• Clinical observations can be recorded in a way that is understood across disciplines

• Your work becomes part of a shared clinical language

Without this kind of structure, even though we are highly educated and skilled our work can remain invisible in the broader health care systems.

With it, dermal clinicians are in a better position to:

• Communicate effectively with other health professionals

• Contribute to shared care models

• Support data collection, research and long term evidence development.

Putting it simply, when things can't be coded, they are hard to make visible or include in a connected system.

What can you start doing now to get ready for connectivity?

There are a number of ways you can prepare that are being supported through national initiatives, uplift programs by Allied Health Professions Australia and the Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians.

It's also to important to remember that you have time, to really sit with this knowledge, research and absorb it, educate yourself in areas you need to know more as these projects are still being worked on.

1. Review your clinical software

The Australian Digital health Agency's Allied Health Industry Offer is designed to support allied health professionals in adopting compliant and conformant clinical software.

Not all systems are capable of connecting to the national digital health infrastructure, so if you are going to be upgrading or reviewing your systems in the near future anyway this is something to have your radar for future participation.

2. Strengthen you Data Privacy Cyber Security Awareness

Having more information accessible to you helps you to be better informed in working with patients to develop care plans and communicate with their health care teams but its also comes with significant responsibility.

This includes:

• Understanding patient privacy obligations

• Ensuring secure storage and handling of records

• Being aware of risks such as data breaches or phishing

Investing in continuing professional development in this area is not recommended - it is becoming essential,

3. Start thinking in systems

This is the mindset that will underpin everything

It means:

• Documenting clearly and consistently

• Using structured, professional language

• Considering how your notes might be interpreted by another clinician from our own or other disciplines.

This means using standardised dermatology assessment algorithms and terminology and making your treatment summaries clear, concise and standardised.

4. Become an active participant in your peak professional organisation

The Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians is a member organisation of Allied Health Professions Australia working on the digital health project for allied health. The ASDC is also the registered organisation with Services Australia for dermal clinicians. If you want to know more about this, be engaged with member information over the next 18 months, as updates on progress and next steps for dermal clinicians come through as progress continues to unfold.

The Opportunity Ahead

It would be easy to view all of this as another layer of complexity or compliance but there is a more useful way to look at it as well.

Digital health creates an opportunity for dermal clinicians to:

• Be more clearly recognised within healthcare

• Contribute to patient care in meaningful ways beyond the time in the clinic room

• Strengthen relationships and collaboration with medical professionals

• Support safe, more informed treatment decisions

Those of use that engage with these changes as they develop will not only adapt more easily, we will also help shape how dermal practice is understood and integrated in the future.

Stay tuned for more information on healthcare identifiers and how they will be the key to accessing these networks in the future.