THE FIRST hospital in Australia to offer fully integrated, digital e-health capability was opened to service Queensland’s Hervey Bay area in December.

St Stephen’s Private Hospital, operated by UnitingCare Health in Hervey Bay, has been created by expanding the regional hospital with a new, three storey inpatient hospital with 96 acute care inpatient beds and three additional operating theatres. 

The hospital’s digital features include patient, community and medical web portals, and information linkages with Hervey Bay Public Hospital, medical practitioners, other UnitingCare Health hospitals, universities and diagnostic providers.

The patient-centred clinical systems include automatic record feed, automated care pathways, alerts, and medication management.

The Federal Government has provided special authorisation under Section 100 of the National Health Act 1953, to enable St Stephen’s to undertake a ‘Paperless Prescribing, Dispensing and Claiming Trial’. Instead of paper scripts, all medication transactions will be done electronically.

Federal Health Minister Peter Dutton said St Stephen’s was a world class hospital which showcased the future of health care. 

“St Stephen’s has raised the bar for all healthcare providers by embracing the technology literally before the foundations were laid,” Mr Dutton said.

“It will be a showcase for the improvements that e-health information technology can make for health care and patient outcomes.

“Digital technology can make health care far more efficient and more effective for patients and providers.

“Given the demands on our health system – from an ageing population, rising levels of chronic disease and ever-rising consumer expectations – creating new efficiencies is essential.”

Federal Member for Hinkler, Keith Pitt said having the first fully digital hospital in Hervey Bay was a huge benefit to the people in the Hinkler electorate.

“State-of-the-art facilities such as these enable regional people to stay close to home when ill or injured,” Mr Pitt said.

“This facility will create new jobs and attract medical specialists to our community.”

The Australian Government provided $25.9 million for the construction of the new hospital building and $21.2 million to equip the expanded hospital with state of the art eHealth technology.

“My department will continue to work with St Stephen’s to monitor the effectiveness of the electronic system, and pick up on the benefits to inform future changes,” Mr Dutton said.

“We will use the lessons learned from St Stephen’s paperless prescribing, dispensing and claiming trial to refine the hospital electronic medication chart, which will soon be in widespread use in Australian hospitals.”

Electronic medication charts will start to be introduced in private and public hospitals this financial year (2014-15).

“This is a great example of the major contribution that private providers, including not-for-profit operators, make to our health care system,” Mr Dutton said.

Wood & Grieve Engineers (WGE) were contracted to provide electrical, mechanical, and vertical transportation services at St Stephen’s including critical engineering systems such as power supply and air conditioning.

A WGE spokesperson said, “Digital technology is seen as the future of healthcare – patient health records and results are updated and accessible on tablets and mobile devices throughout the hospital, personalised food and medication can be managed electronically and practitioners can log in at any time to see what a patient is doing in real time without the need for chasing paper charts throughout the system.

The technology-focussed St Stephen’s project necessitated an innovative approach to engineering. According to WGE’s electrical section manager, Ashley Holm, the biggest challenge was “to come up with an engineering design that was resilient, reliable and user friendly”.

He said reliability and practicality were key drivers of the project’s success. The on-site data centre and air conditioning systems required particular attention as full functionality was essential even during power supply outages.

The entirely digital hospital design used over 300km of fibre optic cable. To ensure system resilience, WGE provided full redundancy in the fibre optic cabling and ICT power infrastructure to minimise downtime and future proof the facility. 

“Close and continuous engagement with the e-health designers as well as the client’s operational team helped us to realise an effective design solution that will serve the hospital well for the life of the facility,” Mr Holm said.

“Being part of a digital hospital design team was a fantastic opportunity to work with a multitude of stakeholders from different backgrounds. The collective goal of delivering Australia’s first digital hospital really gave the team a tremendous incentive and helped to foster a collaborative project environment.”

www.health.gov.au

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TRADITIONAL companies can no longer rely on tangible assets, employee count, word of mouth and proprietary distribution to maintain their presence, according to digital communications specialist Ben Beath.

Start-ups are almost certain to disrupt the incumbents, he will tell the Digital Disruption Forum in Sydney on November 26.

Mr Beath said start-ups like Uber and Airbnb are directly attacking incumbent brands and industries by providing great, end-to-end customer experiences. 

Mr Beath, who is head of the digital division at agency Loud&Clear said, “Companies like Sheraton and Hilton have spent 70-plus years growing hotel brands. Their businesses are intensive.

“They require bricks and mortar, staff, lots of training and flawless service regardless of where they are situated. A decade ago, websites like Wotif.com disrupted their economic model.

“Then AirBNB disrupted their service model. Now, apps like HotelTonight are the third phase, disrupting their customer acquisition model.

“Customers are loyal to the HotelTonight App – not the individual hotel chain,” Mr Beath said. “And as we’ve seen, even the original disruptors, like Wotif, are being disrupted by this approach.”

Mr Beath said customers no longer have to stay with brands they don’t love and are moving from ‘owning products’ to ‘accessing experiences’.  

“That’s why Apple bought Beats,” he said. “That's why the Art Series Hotels stand out.

Mr Beath said the  practice of “building a better mousetrap doesn’t necessarily apply when someone invents something that does the same function in a completely different way”.

“The solution? Think disruptively,” Mr Beath said.

“Design a great customer experience.  End to end. Work across departmental boundaries to design and deliver the experiences.  

“If you don't break down those boundaries, another company or start-up will.”

www.loudclear.com.au

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Digital Business insights by John Sheridan >>

DO YOU NEED an office? That is the question our accountant asked when we started the business 13 years ago. You are a digital business, why don’t you practice what you preach? Do everything online.

Good advice. Today, there are more than 20 of us working together and we still don’t need an office.

Offices are only worth what you can do with them.

If your competitors can do what you do but without the cost of paying the lease for an office building, they are one step ahead of you in efficiency. 

What is the value of the office? Offices provide a workspace and a meeting space. Knowledge work can be done anywhere. And most meetings can be managed perfectly well online, in cafes, homes or other people’s offices.

In a few cases your office is a shop window that says something about your capability, your business, is part of your brand message, and a symbol of what you deliver.

So if you are an advertising agency then selecting the right office is just part of the theatre, part of the creative show business that you offer clients.

If you are a law firm, then the same could be true, but it is a different kind of show business, less theatrical, more conservative and more reassuring.

If you are an accountant, you don’t want to go too far with your fitout, or your clients will begin to wonder who is paying for the views from the 20^th floor.

These days, that element of theatre is diminishing, especially for those businesses where the product or service is delivered online. For those businesses an office isn’t what it used to be. And in many cases the office isn’t there at all.

OFFICES CHANGE SHAPE

But for those businesses that still need an office, the size, shape and layout is evolving fast. Workers need both privacy and community. There is social dimension that cannot be fulfilled completely online, especially for the young.

Most knowledge workers get more work done in private and peaceful situations, with no interruptions, still able to access others electronically. Telework or working from home is becoming commonplace.

So there is an argument that 21^st century ‘offices’ should just comprise meeting rooms and social spaces – boardrooms, staffrooms, kitchens and lounges, and these are all provided informally in cafes, libraries and restaurant areas in cities anyway.

The Queensland State Library is a perfect example of architecturally designed integrated, private and shared spaces, a template for the ideal 21^st century working space.

The creation of similarly designed decentralised, meeting rooms, private and social spaces would help everybody in the 21^st century, except for commercial property developers who have already built and manage thousands of 20^th century stranded assets.

Buildings are worth what you can do with them. And the pressure for change will come from customers and from competition.

STRANDED ASSETS

Drive through any commercial district in Australia’s capital cities and the ‘for lease’ signs are everywhere. We are witnessing permanent disruptive change at its ugliest.

Stranded assets on every street, in every city and in every state. And it will only get worse.

If you look at another example of stranded assets – power stations and distribution systems, then you get the idea. More disruption. More permanent change. It is a digital revolution.

Power stations are out of date. Power generation and centralised energy distribution as a model is dead and dying, threatened by solar driven, distributed personal and local energy generation and distribution.

This disruption has been generated mainly by rooftop competition from solar (and batteries), and the shift will continue over the next few years as solar (and batteries) become more efficient, supported by smart meters and other technologies promoted by a new breed of energy entrepreneurs, which will even include some of the existing energy distributors who can read the writing on the wall.

That will leave coal only as a resource for export to the second and third world, exporting our ‘old world’ with all the moral issues, trade agreement, and carbon mitigation agreement implications that are tied up with that.

Owners of power stations and distribution networks already know this (and have known it for some time) and are trying to offload their ‘assets’ to anybody dumb enough or smart enough to buy them.

Somebody in the market will always be able to see value in a ‘right priced’ investment and will manage it wisely for short-term return and closure.

But for state governments, there is no value in owning a long term stranded asset that will become a massive dollar drain in the medium to long term. So state governments are all struggling to get out of the energy business, and voters should let them. It is not the business state government should be in.

Competition should be encouraged, and that means supporting the ‘new’ clean and green, generators and distributors not punishing them.

It means making way for the change that has to come anyway, and managing it in a way that doesn’t disadvantage renters and the poor.

That is government’s role in a revolution that is happening right here, right now.

*

John Sheridan is CEO of Digital Business insights, an organisation based in Brisbane, Australia, which focuses on helping businesses and communities adapt to, and flourish in, the new digital world. He is the author of Connecting the Dots and getting more out of the digital revolution. Digital Business insights has been researching and analysing the digital revolution for more than 12 years and has surveyed more than 50,000 businesses, conducting in-depth case study analysis on more than 350 organisations and digital entrepreneurs.

http://www.db-insights.com/

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INSIGHTS from Intuit Australia managing director Nicolette Maury  >>

YOU HAVE probably been hearing for some time that technology is the answer to all your problems. That is certainly now true, at least for the admin side of your business.

Cloud technology has delivered on its promise of affordable, efficient IT infrastructure – for all.

You no longer have to be a huge enterprise to have sophisticated technologies that allow you to streamline your operations so you can get on with taking your ideas to market and providing the highest levels of customer service. 

Thanks to the cloud, small businesses now have access to specialised business software where you can turn functionality on and off, add storage as required and only pay for what you use on a monthly or annual subscription.

You’re rescued from the fear of software or hardware failures because your data resides in the cloud so you can access it anytime you want, no matter where you are, and benefit from automatic software updates.

More than this, however, it is the addition of mobility – smartphone and tablet usage – to this picture that is really helping smaller enterprises thrive.

Mobile entrepreneurs are differentiating themselves in the marketplace by having sales and customer information at their fingertips; preparing quotes and proposals in the field; invoicing on the spot;  tracking and logging expenses; and managing projects on the move, whether they’re at a customer site, a café, at home or between appointments.

CLOUD ACCOUNTING – A LYNCHPIN FOR SME SUCCESS

Cloud accounting is becoming an essential part of the technology underpinning strong small businesses and is providing staggering time savings. In fact, according to recent Intuit research, 37 percent of businesses say they save 1-5 hours per week through automation and reduced data entry.

Here, time savings are generated through cloud accounting solutions like QuickBooks Online, where you only have to enter information once and it flows through an integrated structure reducing the administrative burden on SMEs.

Additionally, direct inputs from bank statements make expense reconciliations a breeze, while payroll, super and other rate updates automatically adjust via the cloud technology.

All of this means that an SME owner has an accurate state of play at their fingertips and can track who owes money, where stock is and so on, with secure access to financials from anywhere, on any device, at any time.

Cloud accounting software is also allowing small businesses to work effectively on the go.

For example, if a company has a field team or frequently works out of the office, job details, estimates and invoices can be quickly and accurately captured and sent to customers via their mobile devices.

The fast, personal response makes a real impact on customers and it means core business tasks don’t have to be replicated or done back in the office, saving time and improving cash flow.

ADMIN BECOMES A THING OF THE PAST

In the next five years, ‘administration’ as we know it will be gone and it will be cloud technology that facilitates the serious reduction of the ‘admin’ burden.

There will be no more laborious, repetitive, error-prone data entry or risk-laden hindsight. Owners of even the smallest businesses will be able to use the automated, real time information from their software for powerful financial management insights.

If you’re not bogged down by administrative work, you can remain focused on your business and on making sure you’ve got happy staff and customers.

HELPING BUSINESSES THRIVE IN THE CLOUD

At Intuit, we’re passionate about helping small businesses thrive. We spend more than 10,000 hours a year visiting customers in their homes and offices around the world to see how they use our products and identify how we can solve their biggest problems.

So we’ve designed our product from the ground up to be simple and intuitive to use. And because it’s a cloud solution, we are able to make helpful changes and additions to it whenever we identify a need.

We are putting powerful financial information at the fingertips of business owners.

Typically, large enterprises have been able to analyse their company data to make better business decisions, but these tools have been out of the price range of small businesses.

With QuickBooks Online, SMEs can now get that sort of foresight at the press of a button – they can spot trends in growth numbers, predict cash flow, identify their best customers and so on.  Just one of the ways we help small businesses achieve their financial goals.

Once your accounts are in cloud, you can work with your accountant and/or bookkeeper on a ‘same data, same time’ basis. This means, the bottlenecks and risks of sending the ‘shoe box’ to your accountant once a year are removed.

Working as a team with your accountant, you’ll able to make smarter, faster decisions, identify and leverage new business opportunities – and even discover answers to questions that haven’t been posed yet.

As cloud technology develops and the connections between different software platforms that support small businesses strengthen, the power of the small business-accountant partnership will only strengthen to deliver better SME outcomes.

LINKAGES, INTEGRATION, PARTNERSHIPS – THE NEW BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM

The future is in the creation of products and services that work together perfectly to address the entire workflow for small businesses. With the average small business owner using up to 18 apps to run their business every day, it is essential that vendors, like Intuit, build seamless links between this array of software so they work together to support SME operations.

As such, you will increasingly hear about ‘vendor ecosystems’ which essentially represent IT partnerships that link the best of the best.

Software developers are focussing on their area of expertise and extending the power of their offerings with integration to other mobile, web-based apps, such as time and expense tracking, customer relations and billing.

These allow you to draw data from your accounting solution, such as a customer list for an email campaign, or accept updates like time entries or payments. We’re creating direct paths for small business profitability.

CLOUD DELIVERS SUCCESS

Are you reducing your chances of success by not getting on board with the latest technology developments?

It’s worth taking 30 minutes or so to trial one or two of the latest online accounting solutions. I’m confident you’ll find it life changing as you’ll end up having more time to spend on the things you love doing.

The future for Australia’s small business environment is integrated, mobile and very, very bright.

www.intuit.com.au

BACKGROUND

Intuit Australia managing director Nicolette Maury said Intuit is in the business of helping millions of SMEs stay on top of their finances. By identifying trend opportunities in 2008 and launching one of the first cloud accounting solutions – QuickBooks Online – Intuit has become the global leader in online financial management solutions for small business, she said. Ms Maury joined Intuit in early 2014 and was previously director of strategy and customer programs at eBay. She has led a variety of workgroups involved in new business development and incubation, social innovation and customer experience. In 2013, Ms Maury won an AFR Boss Young Executive of the Year award and before joining eBay in 2006, she was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group where she helped grow the customer base of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

ENDS