Victoria's $500 million e-health system, aimed at creating electronic patient records and prescriptions, has been dumped and will be replaced with a patchwork approach. Health minister, David Davis, confirmed the government had scrapped a further rollout of HealthSMART, the project to modernise the health system's information and communications technology (ICT). Read more here .

The 2012-13 Federal Budget delivered a mixed bag of spending cuts and new investments in telehealth. On the one hand nearly $184 million in incentive payments for practitioner adoption of video technology has been redirected to the National e-Health Program. On the other, the government has given the green light to over $30 million in new telehealth trials to expand into new technical areas outside of video conferencing. Read more here .

Telstra Business has struck a deal with the Australian arm of telehealth provider, Healthways, worth $1.9 million. The main component of the deal - part of a three-year strategic partnership between the two companies - will result in Healthways Australia moving the bulk of its information and communications technology to Telstra’s cloud-based and fully secure virtual servers. Read more here .