Broadband enabled healthcare: The role and contribution of Health and Biomedical Informatics

One way to think about broadband enabled healthcare is as a system where the use of health information is facilitated by ultra-high-speed, high-capacity, ubiquitous, ‘always-on’ connectivity. Broadband marks a radical departure from the way information can be used in healthcare currently, and is anticipated to transform healthcare outcomes in terms of access and equity, safety and quality, sustainability and innovation. In Australia a national broadband network is recognised as a key to achieving a suite of national health system reforms collectively described as the national ehealth system. The information aspects of broadband enabled healthcare are clearly within the scope of health and biomedical informatics. The fundamental place of health and biomedical informatics in broadband enabled health has also been recognised in a major broadband research centre (IBES), which has harnessed the discipline of health and biomedical informatics to coordinate the health and wellbeing piece of its research program. This paper argues that the discipline of Health and Biomedical Informatics has a substantial role to play in ensuring that strategy, technology, accountability and usability are properly integrated in the design, implementation and evaluation of broadband enabled healthcare.