Papers & Presentations
Medical Informatics in a Regional Setting
Dr Mark Pilbeam St John of God Hospital, Ballarat
Much of medical informatics has been directed at the problems of information management in large institutions. In a regional setting the problems are different and the divisions between hospitals, community health care centres, aged care centres, and private medical practices are less well defined. The speakers will adress the issues of sharing of medical information between these institutions and medical practices
In the Grampians region a clincial repository has been established in which medical practices in the region will be connnected to a wide area network involveing public and private hostpicals, aged care centres, and community health care centres. The issues of confidentiality, integrity of data, and accessibility have been addressed.
The provision of consultant radiology services via a microwave link from Ballarat to Melbourne to provide real-time interpretation of images is an important part of the growth of medical technology in the region.
Pathology services for much of the region are supplied by St John of God pathology, which has a policy of working co-operatively with the public health system. The practice is a wide-area network serving private and public hospitals as well as medical practices. The delivery of information to these sites has involved the provision of interfaces to a variety of computer systems using different downloading programs and the internet.
Biography
Dr Pilbeam is a senior pathologist at St John of God Pathology and is based at St John of God Health Care in Ballarat. Prior to gaining his qualifications as a pathologist Mark worked as a medical officer in regional hospitals before returning to Melbourne to pursue a research interest leading to a PhD. He grew up in Ballarat and returned there in 1988 to work as a pathologist in the Medical Laboratory. In addition to these duties he served on the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Board of Education from 1990 - 1997 and also chaired the Victorian State Education Committee of the College. He has a longstanding interest in the application of information technology to laboratory medicine and believes Ballarat is one of the best places to pursue it.