News & Views

Rather than being sidelined by the millennial generation, Australia’s ageing workforce of employees who are nearing retirement age could be a company’s biggest asset.

With one in four Australian workers now aged over 55 and that tipped to increase to a third over the next decade an ageing workforce can’t be ignored.

Following on from our recent eHealth post, we thought we’d delve into the world of ePathology services and their role in an increasingly cloud-based patient record system.

ePathology is the latest addition to eHealth’s patient medical record system, adding electronic pathology test results into the mix to allow NSW physicians to make more informed diagnosis and treatment decisions.

With some of our colleagues in the process of setting up their own My Health Record, we at ACA Research felt the time was right to take a look the far reaching and ultimately exciting topic of eHealth in Australia.

Back in 2015, the Advisory Committee on Medications Scheduling at the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) took a decision that has been hotly debated for the best part of 2 years. They rescheduled Over-The-Counter codeine medications as prescription only.

Ostensibly, the rescheduling decision was undertaken to reduce the risk to consumer health arising from accidental overdosing of codeine from pain and cough, cold and flu remedies. It was informed both by expert opinion and provision of mortality data that showed codeine related deaths to have doubled during the last decade, from 3.5 per million in 2000 to 8.7 per million in 2009 (Source: Medical Journal Of Australia).

In our recent blog, Care and Conflict - The Delicate Balance Between Product Sales and Professional Advice in Pharmacy, we touched on the increasing conflict community pharmacists are facing in their day-to-day role.

At ACA Research, we always get excited to see our key industry sectors in the news. So imagine how excited we were to come across a recent Landline segment, that threw the spotlight on how the Australian beef cattle industry is helping patients suffering from aortic stenosis worldwide.

Recently, I sat down with Jeremy Paton, Team Engagement Solutions Lead at Avaya in Australia for a one-on-one chat about some of the great work Avaya is doing in the healthcare space here in Australia and internationally. Jeremy shared some great insights and talked about his experiences in helping shape the multi-channel for better customer and patient outcomes. 

27^th February saw the first stage of the Government’s Increasing Choice in Home Care measures implemented. This measure now sees all home care packages provided to individual aged care ‘consumers’ rather than awarded to approved providers under the current allocation process.

At ACA Research we aim to shed light on different ‘hot topics’ within the healthcare sector and this week, an intensification of challenges faced by Australian Pharmacists has caught our attention.

Recently the ACA Research Healthcare team conducted research for Medibank to understand the prevalence and impact of loneliness on Australians, particularly those who may need hospital care over the festive season.