Connecting Australia

We have developed an overarching e-health interoperability framework which has been supported by the whole-of-government to exchange information easily.

What is interoperability?

Interoperability is a capability of an organisation or system to use, offer and exchange business or technical services of another organisation or system. In simple terms, your Apple Mac can understand my PC.

E-health does not apply to a healthcare organisation in isolation. It is the exchange of clinical information on an industry-wide basis. There is an increasing demand for clinical information to be exchanged between individual healthcare practitioners, healthcare provider organisations and State and Territory health departments. Interoperability will achieve this.

Standards

A common understanding of the underpinnings of e-health is necessary for interoperability to succeed and consistent support for a suite of nationally-defined standards is essential. Open standards are the cornerstone of interoperability as they allow e-health systems to evolve without being constrained by proprietary software products.

Interoperability is vital as it drives toward electronic interconnectivity to deliver better health outcomes in a more cost-effective way.

An electronically interconnected health environment provides an opportunity for the public health sector to make significant efficiency gains and cost savings, particularly in the area of procurement. To this end, NEHTA has established a National Product Catalogue (NPC) to provide a central source of data for the purchase of healthcare products within health departments in each State and Territory.

The NPC uniquely identifies each healthcare product (eg medicines and medical devices) and records information such as active ingredients and pack size - reducing significantly the number of products incorrectly ordered because of identification errors, which potentially delays patient treatment.

Other benefits of the NPC include:

• Removing the need for each purchasing office and supplier to use inefficient paper-based purchasing forms and product specification sheets - information can be automatically updated for all current and potential customers, with a simple upload.
• Suppliers can reduce costs associated with processing invoice reconciliations, credit claims, returns and refused deliveries, because of the reduced rate of ordering errors.
• Swift product recalls and precise product tracking.
• Decreasing the risk of a hospital running out of stock, while reducing the amount of hospitals' working capital tied up in ‘safety' stocks.
• Significantly reducing the time and costs associated with introducing new products onto the market, while improving product visibility across Australia’s largest healthcare buyers.
• Ensuring pricing information is secure and only available to nominated trading partners.
• Providing clean, accurate product data to use e-health systems (eg medicines prescribing and dispensing systems).