Advance Australia unfair: inequality in healthcare

Telemedicine primarily involves the conduction of remote real time face-to-face electronic consultations between geographically separated individuals. A sick individual in Cobar, for example, could hold a consultation and potentially receive a diagnosis from a doctor in Sydney without leaving their home. Importantly, this distance-transcending tool has enormous potential for such a sparsely populated country such as Australia, potential that has yet to be harvested.

Currently in Australia small telemedicine initiatives exist on the peripheries of health care and only in isolated pockets. Until the Australian Government announced the NBN tele-health pilot program in January 2012, these initiatives were undertaken by private enthusiasts, and consequently are few and far between.

Australia lags behind other countries, such as Canada and Britain, in the dissemination of a publicly funded and mainstream integrated telemedicine scheme. We continue to struggle with inequality of access, yet there has been no real concerted effort to establish the groundwork for a far-reaching and large-scale telemedicine initiative. This is despite the successes of similar programs internationally and considerable support from health professionals.

What is needed now is to fast track such an initiative with its key focus on the improved delivery of healthcare to rural Australian populations. This requires bipartisan support from Canberra to guarantee funding and support, irrespective of the results on the September election.

This is not an issue that can be ignored or postponed. Irrespective of where they live, all Australians should have equality of access to the necessary health services.

The development of a national telemedicine system presents a unique opportunity to facilitate this.