Six countries, six individuals: resourceful patients navigating medical records in Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Sweden and the USA.

In the absence of international standards, widely differing attitudes and laws, medical and social cultures strongly influence whether and how patients may access their medical records in various settings of care. Reviewing records, including the notes clinicians write, can help shape how people participate in their own care. Aided at times by new technologies, individual patients and care partners are repurposing existing tools and designing innovative, often 'low-tech' ways to collect, sort and interpret their own health information. To illustrate diverse approaches that individuals may take, six individuals from six nations offer anecdotes demonstrating how they are learning to collect, assess and benefit from their personal health information.

Exploring the Health Informatics Occupational Group in the 2018 Australian Health Information Workforce Census.

There has been no empirical evidence about the health informatics workforce in Australia produced in the last ten years. This study reports the findings from an analysis of a subset of the 2018 Australian Health Informatics Workforce Census data. Analysing 420 responses that were identified as the occupational group Health Informatics, the results indicate that whilst most of the workforce is classified as aged (>45 years), many respondents are still relatively early in their health informatics careers. Furthermore, most do not possess any formal education in health informatics and almost a quarter undertake their health informatics role alongside another health-related role. The broad range of position titles and functions demonstrates the breadth within this workforce. Ongoing monitoring of this occupational group is required to inform workforce reform and renewal.

The Development of a National Census of the Health Information Workforce: Expert Panel Recommendations.

BACKGROUND: There is a need to develop a national census of the health information workforce to inform the planning and forecasting of the workforce and inform education and training needs. Yet, this raises a number of issues that need to be incorporated into the planning stage. This paper discusses the issues and recommendations for the development of a national health information workforce census and an Expert Panel's recommendations for how we should proceed. METHODS: Nominated participants from Australia and New Zealand participated as Expert Panel members in focus groups to identify and discuss the issues. Recommendations were identified during the focus groups and documented for participant verification. These were then grouped into themes. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The themes of the issues and considerations identified in the focus groups were: Aim of the census; Census advertisement; Census delivery; Participants; Longitudinal study; Types of data elements; Data development and standards; Data ownership, access and governance; Global census; Dissemination of results.

ICT and OTs: a model of information and communication technology acceptance and utilisation by occupational therapists.

There is evidence to suggest that health professionals are reluctant to accept and utilise information and communication technologies (ICT) and concern is growing within health informatics research that this is contributing to the lag in adoption and utilisation of ICT across the health sector. Technology acceptance research within the field of information systems has been limited in its application to health and there is a concurrent need to develop and gain empirical support for models of technology acceptance within health and to examine acceptance and utilisation issues amongst health professionals to improve the success of information system implementation in this arena. This paper outlines a project that examines ICT acceptance and utilisation by Australian occupational therapists. It describes the theoretical basis behind the development of a research model and the methodology being employed to empirically validate the model using substantial quantitative, qualitative and longitudinal data. Preliminary results from Phase II of the study are presented. The theoretical significance of this work is that it uses a thoroughly constructed research model, with potentially the largest sample size ever tested, to extend technology acceptance research into the health sector.