Australia has lots of digital health infrastructure, but that doesn’t mean much without targeted support.
A large review of digital health maturity has found Australian general practice lacking – but researchers say more targeted support, not less, is the answer.
Research published in the Australian Journal of Primary Health last week analysed survey responses from 1164 GP clinics across 10 primary health networks, a sample that covers roughly one in three Australian general practices.
Most responding clinics had been operating for more than 10 years, were privately owned and located in an MM3-MM5 rural town.
At most clinics, the bulk of GPs were aged in their 40s or 50s; just 7% of clinics indicated that their GPs were, on average, aged in their 30s.
The survey itself was delivered over several different iterations between 2020 and 2024, and covered digital health infrastructure, meaningful use, readiness for change, digital literacy, data literacy and clinical leadership.
Where the infrastructure component measures the extent to which IT is set up and ready to use in the practice (think computers, fax machine and practice software), the meaningful use components looks at whether the infrastructure is being used as intended.
Digital literacy, meanwhile, is a measurement of the GP clinic’s perception of its ability to use technology and understand its risks.
On the other hand, data literacy refers to the ability of a clinic to interpret and apply data in decision making.
All six domains were rated on a 100-point scale.
On average, all GP clinics surveyed scored less than 80 across all components.
Clinical leadership and data literacy were the only two domains where GP clinics averaged close to 80.
Meaningful use was where clinics scored the lowest, averaging less than 60.
One in five practices were classified as at a low or “foundational” level of digital health maturity, around 60% were classified as “intermediate” and the remaining 20% were classified as “advanced”.
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“Although digital health infrastructure uptake is reasonably good, meaningful use of digital health solutions remains poor even among the Advanced practices, meaning that digital health has not been strongly adopted in general practice clinics,” the University of Melbourne researchers wrote.
“Most general practice clinics have infrastructure, such as secure messaging, electronic referrals, and electronic prescriptions.
“Yet, they are still far from making full use of this infrastructure.”
Examples included practices using the telephone as the primary form of telehealth provision, using on-premise servers to host their practice management software and not backing up data on the cloud.
Among the “foundational” group, the researchers noted that although nearly all practices indicated that staff and doctors understood cybersecurity and obligations under the Privacy Act, they also reported password-sharing and sending patient information via email.
“Digital health infrastructure alone is not enough,” the researchers said.
“Targeted support is essential for digital adoption.
“Enhancing digital health and data literacy, leadership, and tailored change management can strengthen digital adoption in practices, potentially improving care quality and digital transformation nationally.”
