On 19 March 2019, Venture Insights conducted a health sector breakfast roundtable (in our Melbourne and Sydney offices) to discuss the topic “Expectations versus reality in data-driven healthcare – how do we solve the medical data conundrum?”. We had two speakers: Karn Ghosh, CEO and founder of health-tech firm Hit100, and Dr Sam Prince from the Sam Prince Group and broad discussions and healthy debate among our 35 attendees. We discussed the challenges faced by health-tech businesses that arise from the current siloed, unstructured nature of health data across the Australian healthcare industry and what can be done to improve the collection and sharing of health data for the benefit of both industry participants and patients. The consensus view was that governments, health service providers, communities, individuals and emerging health tech businesses would all play a role in improving the quality of data collected, how it is stored, shared, analysed and used. These improvements will help build trust and grow consumer confidence which in turn should lead to health system efficiency improvements and better health outcomes.

Contents

Key Takeaways

Introduction

Health data challenges in Australia

Australian Health sector challenges

Current trends in Australian healthcare

The role of health data

• Health data is not a commodity for sale
• My Health Record
• Learning from developing countries
• Sharing and accessing health data in the future

List of charts/tables

Figure 1. Health data sources

Figure 2. Health expenditure and GDP ($ billions)

Figure 3. Challenges in Australian healthcare

Figure 4. Health data breaches news (illustrative)

Figure 5. E-health statistics in Estonia