Australian Association of Practice Managers Ltd

MEDIA RELEASE

19 January 2012

AAPM joins forces with MedView and eRx to advance Medicines Management

The Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM) is partnering with MedView and eRx in recognition of their importance to Australia's eHealth future.

National President of the AAPM, Brett McPherson, said "The AAPM is joining the MedView project and endorsing eRx because of their integral role in Australia's eHealth future. MedView represents a tremendous advance in medicines management, and ePrescribing is a vital link in the secure sharing of consented data required to achieve this. The practice management profession has a long history of leadership in healthcare management, and we now have a significant opportunity to dramatically advance medicines management and help shape Australia's eHealth future."

According to Paul Naismith, CEO, Fred IT Group, "We are delighted that the AAPM is joining forces with eRx and MedView and actively supporting advances in the eHealth arena. The industry-wide collaboration and support of GPs, practice managers, pharmacy, and software vendors is vital in realising a change of this importance, and nowhere is this more pressing than in relation to Australia's eHealth future."

MedView is a national medicines repository that will provide healthcare providers a combined list of prescribed and dispensed medications collected from community, hospital and aged care settings, resulting in better discharge and medications management information, and safer outcomes for patients. Initiatives such as MedView rely upon wider eHealth infrastructure such as ePrescribing. eRx Script Exchange, a national prescriptions service exchange, provides a vital link by enabling consented data to be securely shared with the national repository.

Clinicians will be able to access MedView directly and easily from their existing clinical software. MedView will initially be available in selected sites from March 2012.

As Brett McPherson describes, "We have already seen significant interest in ePrescribing. However, for Practice Managers who have not yet embraced ePrescribing, this is the time to do so as one of the key steps towards eHealth."

MedView is a Federal Government funded industry partnership (part of the $467 million Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) project). The Fred IT group is leading the project. Other project partners include NEHTA, Barwon Medicare Local, Barwon Health, and Pharmacy Guild of Australia, as well as leading software vendors Best Practice, Zedmed, iCare, BossNet, FRED, Simple Retail, Pharmhos, and eRx Script Exchange.

For more information visit www.erx.com.au and www.medview.com.au or call 1300 721 103.

eRx Script Exchange isa national electronic prescriptions exchange designed to improve health outcomes through a safer, more efficient dispensing process. eRx is led by the Fred IT Group in collaboration with over 20 of Australia's leading GP and pharmacy software vendors. The GP clinical vendors include Medical Director, Best Practice, Zedmed, StatHealth and MedTech32, and dispensing software vendors include Aquarius, Fred Dispense, minfos, LOTS, Amfac, PharmacyPro, DispenseIT, Mountaintop Dispense and ScriptPro. More than 13,000 doctors and 3,800 pharmacies around Australia have already used eRx.

For media queries please contact:

David Freemantle, General Manager, eHealth, Fred IT Group, P: +61 3 9418 1800

Hugh Miller, eHealth Marketing Officer, Australian Association of Practice Managers Limited, P + 61 3 9095 8714