The continuity of care doesn't break because the information follows them
When floods close clinics and fires consume paper records, the continuity of care has long depended on the fragile luck of proximity and memory. Australia's digital health infrastructure — My Health Record and the Active Script List — represents a quiet but consequential shift: the idea that a person's medical story should follow them wherever crisis sends them, not remain hostage to a building or a filing cabinet. These tools, already operational, ask only that patients and providers choose to use them before the next disaster arrives.
- Disasters routinely sever patients from their medications, their records, and their regular providers — a gap that digital infrastructure is now designed to close.
- Paper prescriptions and fragmented pharmacy records become liabilities the moment a flood or fire disrupts normal routines, leaving patients and clinicians guessing at critical health histories.
- My Health Record aggregates prescriptions, pathology results, discharge summaries, and GP notes into a single cloud-based profile accessible to any registered provider, anywhere in Australia.
- The Active Script List eliminates the chaos of scattered electronic prescription tokens by centralising all current scripts into one record that patients, pharmacies, and prescribers can access simultaneously.
- Adoption — not technology — is now the limiting factor: the infrastructure exists, registration is straightforward, and the system is only as resilient as the number of people who enrol before the next emergency.
When disaster strikes — a flood, a fire, an impassable road — healthcare does not pause. Patients still need medications; clinicians still need to know what has been prescribed. The longstanding obstacle has been access: records trapped in damaged buildings, prescription histories scattered across pharmacies, patients stranded far from their usual providers. Australia's digital health tools are built precisely for this gap.
My Health Record is the country's secure cloud-based repository of essential medical information, drawing from hospitals, general practices, Medicare, and the Department of Veterans' Affairs. From July 2026, pathology and diagnostic imaging reports will be added automatically, joining prescriptions, dispensing records, discharge summaries, and shared health summaries already held there. When a patient arrives at an unfamiliar clinic during an emergency, a registered provider can retrieve that record immediately — no phone calls, no guesswork about conditions or medications.
The Active Script List addresses a more specific problem: the unwieldy nature of managing multiple electronic prescription tokens sent by SMS or email. When a patient is on several medications, tokens arrive at different times, through different messages, and can vanish entirely if a phone is lost or a number changes. The Active Script List consolidates all current prescriptions into a single digital record, visible to the patient, accessible to any participating pharmacy, and updatable directly by prescribers. A person evacuated from their suburb can walk into any participating pharmacy and have their complete prescription history on hand.
Registration for the Active Script List requires only a visit to any pharmacy with standard identification. From that point, patients can grant access to any provider or pharmacy they choose — a flexibility that becomes essential when regular clinics are damaged or closed. The broader principle underlying both tools is that disasters are not exceptions to be managed after the fact, but certainties to be planned for. The infrastructure already exists. What remains is the decision to use it.
When disaster strikes—a flood that closes clinics, a fire that destroys records, a storm that makes roads impassable—healthcare doesn't pause. Patients still need their medications. Doctors still need to know what's been prescribed. The challenge has always been access: paper records trapped in damaged buildings, prescription histories scattered across pharmacies, patients unable to reach their regular providers. Digital health infrastructure offers a way through.
My Health Record is Australia's secure digital repository of a person's essential medical information. It sits in the cloud, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, and it pulls data from multiple sources: what patients enter themselves, what hospitals upload, what general practices contribute, what Medicare and the Department of Veterans' Affairs record. From July 2026, pathology and diagnostic imaging reports are automatically included. Prescription and dispensing records are already there. So are discharge summaries from hospitals, shared health summaries from GPs, event summaries from allied health workers and specialists. During an emergency, when a patient arrives at an unfamiliar clinic or hospital, a provider can pull up that record instantly—no phone calls, no waiting, no guessing about what medications someone takes or what conditions they have.
Accessing the record is straightforward. Patients use MyGov or the 1800MEDICARE App from their phone or computer. Healthcare providers who've registered can view records through the National Provider Portal or through their practice management software if it's compatible with the system. Uploading new information requires compatible software, but viewing is available to anyone registered.
The second tool is the Active Script List, which addresses a specific but significant problem: the chaos of managing multiple electronic prescriptions. Electronic prescribing has become standard practice—doctors send prescriptions as digital tokens via SMS or email rather than printing paper slips. It's efficient and reduces waste. But when a patient is taking five or six medications, or when they're using a pharmacy delivery service, keeping track of those tokens becomes unwieldy. They arrive in different messages, at different times, and if a patient loses their phone or changes their number, the tokens vanish.
An Active Script List creates a single, centralized digital record of all a person's current prescriptions. Patients can see it through My Health Record or the 1800MEDICARE App. Pharmacies can access it to fill prescriptions. Doctors can send new prescriptions directly to it. Once registered, a patient never has to chase down a token again. More importantly for disaster scenarios: if a patient is displaced and needs to fill prescriptions at an unfamiliar pharmacy, that pharmacy can pull up the complete list of what they're supposed to be taking.
Registration is simple. A patient visits any pharmacy with 100 points of identification and consents to the pharmacy setting up and managing their list. From that point, they can grant access to any pharmacy or healthcare provider they choose. This flexibility is crucial during emergencies. A patient whose regular doctor's clinic is damaged can see a different provider, who can immediately see what medications they're on. A person evacuated from their suburb can fill prescriptions at any participating pharmacy. The continuity of care doesn't break because the information follows them.
These tools exist within a broader recognition that disasters are not aberrations—they're inevitable. Healthcare systems that plan for disruption, that build redundancy into their information systems, that ensure patients can access their own data from anywhere, are systems that can keep functioning when physical infrastructure fails. The infrastructure is already built. The question now is adoption.
Notable Quotes
Digital health tools can assist practices to remain operational during disaster and emergency events, ensuring the continued delivery of care to patients— Planning for Practice Disruption series
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter that prescriptions are digital and centralized? Couldn't a patient just tell a new doctor what they're taking?
They could, but people are often wrong about their own medications—the dose, the frequency, the spelling of the drug name. And in a disaster, when someone's stressed and displaced, memory gets worse. A centralized list is the source of truth.
What happens if the internet goes down during a disaster?
That's a real constraint. These systems depend on connectivity. But most disasters don't take out the internet entirely—they take out physical access. A flooded clinic is still connected to the network. A displaced patient with a phone can still reach the system.
How many Australians actually have a My Health Record set up?
The source doesn't give adoption numbers, but the system is designed to be automatic for most people now. The real question is how many are actively using it, uploading documents, granting access.
If I grant a pharmacy access to my Active Script List, can they see everything?
They can see your current prescriptions. The consent is specific to the list itself. You're not giving them access to your full health record—just the medications you're taking.
What's the practical difference between this and just calling your regular pharmacy?
Your regular pharmacy might not exist anymore. Or you might be hundreds of kilometers away. This system lets any pharmacy, anywhere, see what you need. It's about resilience when normal channels break down.