8 Nov 2011
The volume of electronic referrals and patient reports distributed through Global Health’s ReferralNet platform continues to double. In the six months to June 2011, close to 60,000 messages were securely transmitted between participating healthcare providers via the ReferralNet hub, more than double the 22,000 processed over the corresponding period(six months to June 2010). The trend continued over the September 2011 quarter with over40,000 messages securely delivered compared to approximately 20,000 in the previousSeptember quarter (2010).
Revenue from ReferralNet is derived from a combination of subscription and volume plans. Due to the high costs associated with supporting the development of interconnectivity specifications and standards and the lack of widespread healthcare industry adoption of secure messaging foundation services to date, ReferralNet needs further scale to cover our investment, although the gap between revenue and expenses is narrowing.
The trigger for changing from paper-based communications to secure electronic messagingdeveloped momentum in November 2009 following the introduction of financial incentives by the Government for GPs to adopt secure point to point electronic messaging as a foundation requirement for the national e-health superhighway. A key driver of the Company’s success has been the focus of ReferralNet on connectivity across Specialists, Allied Health and GPs in an unobtrusive and integrated manner, minimising the need for changes in work practice.
Global Health CEO, Mathew Cherian, said, “The key to success enjoyed by game-changers is the lack of need for change management. This is an important tenet that we encourage in all our product development. In my view, there is an inverse relationship between the size of the Change Management task and project success, especially when you are dealing with adoption across thousands of small businesses, as opposed to rolling out a new product within a single organisation. The sustainable approach is to design and implement products that are just intuitive and unobtrusive; that supports existing clinical practice, and improves workflows and outcomes as a by-product. Similarly, products have to deal with the real world and cater to the diversity of messaging formats and the varying capabilities of application software used by clinicians – there are hundreds of software applications used across health, each with varying sophistication in their ability to support standard message formats and protocols – we have not come across any that we haven’t been able to cater for yet, despite the absence of agreed standards in many areas.” Electronic messaging across healthcare is very much at an early stage of adoption, with the bulk of communications still based on fax and traditional mail. Consequently the message volumes and subscription growth rates are forecast to continue into the foreseeable future as more businesses recognise the commercial value and adopt the practice for its intrinsic commercial value.
About Global Health Limited: Global Health is a leading provider of e-health solutiosn to the Australian Healthcare industry supportinghealthcare delivery in hospitals and communitiy settings.
Global Health supports the business, clinical and operational needs of Healthcare providers committed to the effective management of chronic diseases and health promotion programs. Internet connectivity is embedded in Global Health applications to promote secure information sharing, financial transactions and the use of technology in ways that transform the way healthcare is delivered.
Global Health is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and operates in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Malaysia. For further information about Global Health and its products, visit www.global-health.com.
For media and marketing enquiries, please contact:
Cherylynn Garner
Marketing Communications Manager
T: 61 3 9675 0611 E: marketing@global-health.com