598 - Behind the Scenes of Medical Software in Australia: MSIA’s Role and Priorities

In this episode of Talking Health Tech, host Peter Birch sits down with Emma Hossack, CEO of the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA), to explore the critical but often invisible role of medical software in Australia's healthcare system. Hossack provides a comprehensive overview of MSIA’s origins, its 20-year evolution from a Victorian industry initiative to a national body representing over 95% of health software applications in Australia. She emphasizes how MSIA acts as a vital bridge between government and private sector innovators, ensuring regulatory alignment, policy coherence, and industry collaboration—especially during crises like the rapid rollout of electronic prescribing during COVID-19. The discussion delves into the growing impact of AI in medical software, MSIA’s development of a voluntary governance code for unregulated AI tools, and the urgent need for government recognition of the immense regulatory and compliance burden on health tech companies. Hossack reveals that many firms now dedicate up to 80% of their resources to compliance rather than innovation, a trend she attributes to an overwhelming number of consultations and un-funded mandates. She calls for systemic change, including targeted incentives like Medicare digital payments and funding for software implementation and training, to sustain Australia’s world-class health tech ecosystem. The episode concludes with a call to action for industry stakeholders to engage with MSIA’s upcoming productivity report and marketplace initiative, which will showcase member companies and their innovations through a curated podcast library. Key takeaways include: 1) Health software underpins nearly all clinical workflows in Australia, and its failure would collapse the health system; 2) MSIA is essential for policy coordination, regulatory navigation, and industry matchmaking; 3) AI governance must be agile and industry-led, with MSIA’s voluntary code filling gaps left by slow-moving regulators; 4) The current compliance burden—up to 80% of dev time—threatens innovation and export potential; 5) Government should fund implementation and training, not just consultancies, to avoid unfair competition and ensure effective rollout; 6) MSIA is building a public marketplace with company profiles and podcasts to improve transparency and discovery; 7) Industry sustainability depends on recognizing the value of non-revenue work like compliance and policy engagement; 8) The health tech sector is not a rent-seeking industry but a high-trust, high-responsibility ecosystem that deserves fair support.