Melbourne, Australia
Independent · Not a clinic
An independent Australian journal of digital health
Digital DoctorExplainers on telehealth, records, medicines and the systems between Australian patients and their clinicians.
27 long-form pieces, arranged newest first. Every essay is also filed in a topic hub.
A child's My Health Record sits in an awkward space between parental responsibility and a teenager's right to confidentiality. This article covers age of access, separated families, school apps, and when a young person should take control of their own record.
At 2am the choices are a nurse line, a home visit, a marketplace GP app, or the emergency department. Here is how those Australian services differ, what they can prescribe, and how to decide without pretending it is your usual clinic.
The Agency runs national digital infrastructure. It is not your GP, not Medicare, and not AHPRA. This explainer separates the operator of My Health Record, electronic prescribing standards and the HI Service from the Department that sets health policy.
Ambient AI scribes are arriving in Australian consulting rooms faster than the consent scripts. This article covers AHPRA and privacy issues, who authors the note, hallucination risk, and a practical way to ask patients before the microphone starts listening.
Community-controlled services already run clinics, data and trust. A national portal does not replace that. This report looks at data sovereignty, nominated representatives, language and the limits of remote tools.
Medicare’s Better Access program, telehealth psychology, and the Head to Health pathway now sit beside a crowded market of mental-health apps. This article separates rebated care from wellness marketing, and is honest about what a phone cannot do in a crisis.
Referrals still vanish between GPs and specialists because fax, inbox rules and half-connected software remain normal. This explainer covers electronic referrals, secure messaging, My Health Record uploads, and what patients can do while the letter is in limbo.
A five-GP clinic does not need a security operations centre. It does need a floor — multi-factor authentication, no shared logins, tested backups, a breach plan and vendor contracts that mention privacy. A practical checklist for practices that still share a password on a sticky note.
Distance still shapes Australian care. Video helps when the bandwidth holds and the local relationship exists. It does not replace retrieval, visiting specialists, or a flight when the chest pain will not wait.
Continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps and the National Diabetes Services Scheme have made diabetes one of Australia’s most digital chronic conditions. This article separates a pretty glucose graph from a care plan, and explains NDSS access in general terms.
A usual GP is still the safest default. If you use a marketplace app, check AHPRA registration, fees, privacy, scripts and what happens after the call. This checklist is for patients and practice managers who are tired of slogans.
Seeing a flagged blood test or scan report online is now common. This guide explains how consumer access works, what reference ranges mean, why a flag is not a diagnosis, and how to sit with a worrying PDF until a clinician can interpret it.
Australia has national identifiers, a summary record and a fashionable data standard. Patients still carry discs, repeat their history, and hear that the computer is down. Here is what FHIR and the HI Service can and cannot fix.
Wrist wearables now arrive in Australian general practice as screenshots, not as a diagnosis. This guide covers atrial fibrillation claims, step counts, sleep scores, what GPs can usefully review, and how to share data without dumping a spreadsheet on the front desk.
Older Australians are not a single skill level. Lockouts, shared phones and Medicare-looking scam texts do more damage than a missing app. Here is how practices can help without taking the keyboard.
A good GP will cancel a video slot when the story needs hands, light or an urgent door. This piece covers chest pain, abdominal pain, unwell children, skin lesions, intimate exams and new neurological symptoms, and how to hear a clinical no.
Too many Australians leave hospital with a follow-up plan that never quite reaches the GP. This piece looks at why discharge summaries vanish, what patients can request, how My Health Record uploads help, and how to keep medicines and reviews from falling through the cracks.
Paper medication charts in residential aged care are giving way to electronic records. This article looks at pack-out errors, after-hours GP changes, family access, and why a missed upload can become a hospital admission rather than a paperwork problem.
Symptom trackers and wellness apps sit in a grey zone of Australian privacy law. Here is what the APPs actually require, where overseas servers change the risk, and a checklist before you log a headache.
Treating clinicians, emergency staff and nominated representatives can open a My Health Record under different rules. This article sets out those pathways, the access controls consumers can apply, and why the file in your GP software is not the same thing as the national record.
Phone is faster and more familiar. Video shows a face, a room and sometimes a rash. This guide sets out the clinical limits of audio-only care, when a camera helps, and why bandwidth and privacy still decide the modality in Australian homes.
Community pharmacy is now a digital front door as well as a dispensary. This feature looks at electronic prescriptions, MedsCheck and Home Medicines Review, vaccinations, and how pharmacists can work with the GP rather than around them.
Medicare generally wants a recent in-person GP visit before it rebates most GP telehealth. This piece sets out what the relationship requirement actually is, the common exceptions, and how new patients and marketplace apps run into it.
Schedule 8 medicines can be prescribed electronically in Australia, but extra legal and pharmacy controls still apply. This article explains identity checks, real-time monitoring in general terms, interstate travel, and why forwarding a token is a bad idea.
My Health Record is Australia's national shared health record. This guide explains what typically appears — medicines, immunisations, discharge summaries, and some pathology and imaging — what does not land automatically, and how consumers can open the record and add their own notes.
Temporary COVID telehealth items became a standing part of Medicare from 1 January 2022. This explainer covers what patients can still get by phone or video, how GP, specialist and allied health rules differ, and why bulk-billing is still a practice decision.
Electronic prescriptions in Australia travel as tokens by SMS or email, or sit on an Active Script List. This explainer covers how eScripts work at the chemist, repeats, pharmacy changes, paper fallback and the everyday failures that stall the queue.