Comparison of Healthcare Systems in Australia and Japan, The Death of an African Child

This article compares healthcare systems in Australia and Japan in terms of quality of care, reducing disparities and electronic health records. It also discusses the management of an African child and how affordable digital technologies could have improved her management.

DIGITAL HEALTH

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTICLE 1.....................................................................................................................................1
ARTICLE 2.....................................................................................................................................1
The Death of an African Child....................................................................................................1

ARTICLE 1
Compare healthcare systems in Australia and Japan in terms of quality of care, reducing
disparities and electronic health records
Australia Japan
Quality of care Australian Commission on Safety and
Quality in Health Care is majorly
responsible for safety and quality
improvement in health care.
Ministry of Health, Labour and
Welfare organizes and
promotes a voluntary
benchmarking project in which
hospitals report quality.
Japan Council for Quality
Health Care put penalties put
penalties on hospitals for not
maintaining qulity.
Reducing disparities Nongovernment component supported
through the Australian Human Rights
Commission
Whereas, federal government provides
financial incentives to encourage GPs
and other health workers to work in
rural and remote areas.
National health promotion
strategy has been developed
for reduction of disparities in
healthy life expectancies
Electronic health
record
With Australian Digital Health
Agency e-health program that handle
health records of whole country
Electronic health record
network had been developed as
experiment only. It cannot be
established at national level
due to technical and legal
issues
ARTICLE 2
The Death of an African Child
Key steps in the management of the patient
1

 On 3rd day child was taken to traditional healer prior to her hospitalization but herbal
medications failed to relive child from pain and fever.
 On 4th day some tablets bought from local vendor were tried and given to the child.
Problems occurred during her management
Some of the main problems that occurred during her managed was that child was already
suffering from malaria and instead of taking her to hospital, for five days child was let to suffer
from headache and fever.3rd day she was given some herbal treatment and most of the times these
treatments are not much effective. Then when there was still no improvement then instead of
taking hr to hospital again some tablets were given to her from local vendor without verifying
tablet name, checking whether it is genuine or fake, checking its expiry date etc. Most of the
medicines sold by vendor do not have label and expiry date on it and some of them are even
fake.
After hospitalization as well results did not arrive on time and in fact blood sample was
even returned. As a result, 2 days with test results passed. Not only this, nobody even bothered to
ask for results as her condition did not deteriorating. She was being treated for malaria but when
clinician himself checked the results, results were negative but still results of blood samples were
nowhere to be found. These were some of the main problems occurred with the child during her
management.
Affordable digital technologies have improved her management
Yes, affordable digital technologies could have definitely improved her management.
Like mobile phone with internet cloud have helped mother to understand seriousness of her
health so that she would have taken her to hospital few days before.
Adoption of digital management system would have forced clinicians to test and upload
her reports online same day so that it can be viewed by clinician. Not only this, this digital
system would have made uploading of results much faster and would have made her
management much better.
2