IBM previewed its healthcare patient portal at CeBIT in Germany last week after winning a $23.6 million contract to design and build a similar service in Australia.The IBM Patient Empowerment System, a portal for patients to find information, alerts and recommendations and to interact with healthcare professionals online, was developed by IBM Research alongside physicians from Korea’s Gacheon University Gil Hospital.

The aim of the original pilot was to increase efficiency and reduce costs by giving patients an active role in their treatments.

The roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Australia was promoted by the Gillard Government last year for its potential e-health benefits like online medical consulting for rural Australians.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) told a Parliamentary Inquiry last week that lacking data transfer protocols were one of the chief barriers to effective e-healthcare services. The AMA noted the impact of connectivity loss during the Queensland floods.

Also noted was the concern over encryption of patient information. IBM has taken up the e-health bill in Australia, recently winning a $23.6 million contract to build the National Authentication Service for Health last week to combat this.

The construction of infrastructure for this e-health authentication system was originally to be undertaken by the National E-Health Transition Authority, but the group released the project to third parties last September after realising the complexity of the project.

The technology used in IBM’s Watson, a super computer that beat humans at the American quiz show, Jeopardy!, is similarly used in IBM’s healthcare service tests as a means of gathering context-relevant healthcare information from databases for physicians.