Wednesday, 4 March 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (19:20): (2385) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. The action I seek is for the minister to explain when the government will release a new, long-term digital health strategy that ensures hospitals, clinicians and patients are supported by a modern, connected and efficient health system. Victoria’s health system is under enormous pressure, as we all know. You have heard me talk about it so many times. Emergency departments are overflowing. Elective surgery waiting lists remain far too high, and clinicians across the system are telling us they are being asked to do more with less. In a modern health system, digital infrastructure should be one of the most powerful tools we have to improve patient care and reduce pressure on hospitals. Digital systems should allow doctors and nurses to access patient information instantly, reduce duplication of tests, support virtual care and improve communication and coordination between hospitals, community health services and primary care. But when we look at Victoria’s digital planning for health, we draw a blank. The government’s digital health road map was trotted out as the panacea for a world of woes back in 2021, but the road map was time stamped from 2021 to 2025, so that is last year. It was intended to improve digital maturity across the health system – things like electronic patient records, better data sharing and digital care models. But it is 2026 and the road map is now a roadblock. At this stage there is no publicly released successor strategy that sets out how Victoria will digitally transform the health system over the next decade. That means Victoria, a state spending more than $30 billion a year on health, is past the end of its digital health road map without a clear plan for what comes next.

At a time when digital transformation and AI are redefining health care, what we see is a fragmented patchwork of hospital IT systems that often struggle to communicate with one another. Even the government’s own integration projects rely on stitching together multiple platforms through exchange layers rather than building a truly unified system. You do not see this happening in other states in this country. This is unique to Victoria – and no surprises, they have just stuffed it up again. Without a long-term strategy, health services are left investing in their own systems, often with technologies that do not talk to each other. That fragmentation creates inefficiencies, wastes resources and ultimately affects patient care. At a time when every hospital bed and every minute of clinician time matters, we should be doing everything possible to ensure that the system is connected, efficient and working as one. Other jurisdictions, as I said, are moving ahead with long-term digital health strategies and workforce plans. Victoria should not be falling behind. Digital reform cannot be an afterthought. It requires leadership, coordination and a clear long-term plan. Clearly in Victoria we do not have that with the Allan Labor government.