Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 3:37:05 to 3:41:16
Concerns regarding incoherent results for Motor Neurone Disease assessments and the planned review of the classification algorithm.
Topics: Social services, Health, Artificial intelligence
Speakers: Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Mr Greg Pugh, Mr Blair Comley, Ms Sonja Stewart, Unknown Speaker
Well, I Mr Pugh might want to comment. My understanding is that um M and D is not one degree of um severity of impact, and maybe the chief medical officer might want to comment on that. Um, and then maybe Mr. Pugh would comment, but I think it's whilst MND on the prioritization side. I know Miss Annie asked about prioritization gives you five points. The question of what are the needs that arise from that will differ to some extent across people depending on the severity of their condition. Uh CMO, would you want to comment?
My question though, um Mr. Connolly. I understand that people at different stages of MND have different conditions. You I don't need to be they have that explained to me. What MND Australia is saying is that they are not seeing any coherence in the way the results are coming back given where people are at in the stages of their MD journey. So relative to each other, they're not seeing a coherence in the way the tool is classifying, and that is my question. Do you have an insight as to why that is happening in the tool?
So we have engaged uh with MND Australia and other organisations as well. Um it is something that we're getting our technical people in our data scientists to look into. So I don't have a ready-made answer for you now, but um that is absolutely something that we would be bringing into the uh independent review process because we would like to understand that as well as your earlier questions around dementia, so it's just to make sure that we are capturing those things properly, and if they're not, uh if you know what MND Australia and others are saying that it's not quite uh there or is producing incoherent results, we'll look at the options that we have to revise the algorithm to um to make sure that it does. Um I will just point out as well though, there were the changes to the priority um uh scoring system, and that means that has so that that's one part of the picture, um, the the classification component, the level of funding is obviously something that we will be looking at as part of that review.
All right, thank you. Um, and just uh another question around the review that's going to be happening. When you talked uh answered questions that Senator Ruston had around the rapid review into prioritization, um I wrote down the the various targets. Targeted consultations that you did, and it seems to me that the bulk of those are either government attached entities or government funded entities. In terms of the review that's now going to take place into the classification algorithm, is the government and the department looking to go much more broadly than just that list of folks that you had for the targeted review for the prioritization algorithm.
So that will be a decision of government in terms of a who is exactly consulted upon. I would reflect though, in previous uh consultations around the reforms implementation. Um it was very extensive consultation, and um I think it was Mr. Pugh who was um giving the list. Sorry, Senator Alton Panel wasn't sure if you were on the line at the time, but perhaps you could go through in terms of the categories.
No, I don't think that will be.
Okay, sorry.
I think the answer to your question is whilst the formal terms of reference and the methodology hasn't been determined. I think it's fair to say that the department and the government is well aware of the interest in this question. And so my anticipation would be that we would go to broad public consultation on the on the process.