The aim of an event summary is to add significant health care information to an individual’s electronic health record, at the discretion of the clinician and with the consent of the individual. The information may be used by the nominated primary provider to update their local record and the individual’s shared health summary.
The My Health Record system supports the collection of eReferral documents. When a healthcare provider creates an eReferral document it will be sent directly to the referee, as per current practices. A copy may also be sent to the individual’s digital health record.
Event summary in the Australian context
An event summary is used to capture key health information about significant healthcare events that are relevant to the ongoing care of an individual. Event summaries can be submitted to the My Health Record system by any participating organisation.
Context in digital health
The scope of the event summary addresses the needs of GPs but is a generic event summary. Events and information from other healthcare providers is envisaged for the future.
Figure 1: High level overview of clinical document delivery
These flows are described below:
- The nominated healthcare provider consults with a patient and writes an event summary in their local system
- The authoring system converts the clinical information into a structured electronic document
- Other healthcare providers, usually the patients’ primary healthcare providers, can view the event summary by downloading it from the My Health Record system
