The Baird government has vowed to pump $300 million over the next four years into e-health projects if it is re-elected on Saturday. Health minister, Jillian Skinner said on Thursday that the NSW government had made a record investment in IT in its first term, rolling out new projects across the state’s 15 local health districts and two specialty networks. If re-elected, the government said it would spend $48 million to expand e-health programs across rural and remote areas; $4 million to deploy an extra 100 tele-health sites, adding to the 1000 sites already in operation; and $4.9 million to rollout HealtheNet to a further 11 local health districts. HealtheNet provides NSW Health clinicians with access to a consolidated view of a patient’s clinical information from across NSW Health and a patient’s National eHealth Record through the NSW Clinical Portal. Further, the government promised to spend $3.5 million to enhance the ‘Hospital in the Home’ program in rural areas through initiatives that provide community nurses with laptops and mobile devices, and in-home monitoring devices for patients. The program provides care to patients at their home or clinic as an alternative to hospital care. Finally, the government said it would create a new NSW Health eHealth Strategic Plan: Enabling eHealth 2021 to provide a clear direction for future ICT investment and e-health programs. Skinner claimed that the days of paper records being lugged around and physically transferred from treating doctor to doctor will soon be over thanks to the HealtheNet, Electronic Medications Management and Electronic Medical Records systems. She said the government is adding a voice recognition capacity to the Electronic Medical Records system. Every day in NSW, around 23,000 clinicians log on 250,000 electronic records and order 140,000 tests, she said. The system has been piloted at Concord Hospital, and has demonstrated a 66 per cent reduction in prescribing errors, and a 44 per cent reduction in serious prescribing errors. Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter:@ByronConnolly Related content brandpost Sponsored by G42 Understanding the impact of AI on society, environment and economy By Jane Chan Dec 03, 2023 4 mins Artificial Intelligence opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe