The digital health black hole must be fixed

The Productivity Commission’s report on the failure of the federal government’s My Health Record portal should concern all Australians not only as taxpayers, but as health care consumers in a rapidly ageing society.

Despite the $2 billion invested in what was supposed to be a centralised digital access point for patients’ most important health data, poor interoperability and clunky usability means that just a tiny fraction of the documents uploaded – 2 per cent – are viewed by other clinicians.