The ANU (Australian National University) is today hosting an important and timely forum in Canberra on e-health, which I had the privelege of opening just a little while ago. The forum is a joint initiative of the ASPR (Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research) and ISRII (International Society for Research on Internet Interventions) and titled: From Research to Implementation.
This forum is important because there is arguably not a greater social and economic challenge for Australia than addressing spiralling health costs as our population expands and a higher proportion of Australia’s citizens are older.
There is growing domestic and international evidence that supports the use of internet-based clinical treatments as a cost effective and beneficial altenative to traditional treatment options. I would like to cite the Beacon website as a great example of bringing together with some peer and community review of the growing range of mental health services and support that can be accessed via the internet. Beacon is an initiative of the Centre for Mental Health Research at the ANU and now includes over 100 online mental health programs.
The Federal Labor Government believes that evidence-based policy offers the best chance for successful sustainable programs to improve the lives of citizens, so we are enthusiastic supporters of forums like these which draw together practitioners, researchers, academics and students to discuss and share ideas and experiences in the field. As a government we can learn from your insights and draw on your experience in the development of policy into the future.
I also firmly believe the time is just right for sharing and promoting successful e-health strategies and programs as well as identifying where more investment and endeavour is required. The federal government is investing up to $43 billion in a National Broadband Network because we see as the a critical piece of social and economic infrastructure for the 21st century. How we use the NBN and put it to work on behalf of citizens in areas like e-health is more important than ever. This work needs to happen now as the NBN starts being rolled out.
With at least 8.4 million Australians actively using the internet, up from 7.2 million just 18 months ago, we can start to get a sense of the consistent strong growth in internet usage now, let alone as higher bandwidth becomes available in the future.
The other change occurring is how people are using the internet. Australians have shown themselves to be early adopters of the range of online social networking tools. This means that as the web moves from what we called Web1.0 to Web2.0, which is the transition from a read-only version of the web to a fully interactive communication medium, we need to take care as a government to keep up with the pace of change!
Finally, the ANU and its associated research institutions have been identified by the Prime Minister as being increasing important to public policy development for this Government. For this reason, the e-health forum is occurring at the right place at the right time. People with expertise to share and experience are in a great position to be involved in the e-health policy discussions now taking place and I congratulate them.
