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Industry News

Welcome to the industry news section of the NEHTA website. Here you will find a growing library of articles to help the information technology and health informatics community keep pace with technical news and views from the NEHTA work program.

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ePrescriptions on the move

Thurs 9 Sept: Australia’s first national electronic prescription system has moved a step closer following the release of updated draft specifications. The suite of documents, known as the Electronic Transfer of Prescription (ETP) Release 1.1 defines plans for a national framework and will be available for public comment until 15 October 2010.

Victorian hospitals go live with AMT

Thurs 9 Sept: The Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) made its debut in a live clinical environment in Victoria, last month. This national system for identifying and naming medicines is being used by the Victorian Department of Health to support outpatient and discharge prescribing through the Department’s HealthSMART Clinical System.

AMT is a system of standardised naming conventions and a terminology structure that describes and allows consistent and accurate identification of medications on the market. The terminology is designed for use by medication management computer systems, in both primary and secondary healthcare, and has been incorporated into the latest version of Cerner's Millennium application, at Box Hill Hospital, part of the Eastern Health zone in outer Melbourne. The software uses terms from AMT as the basis of search and selection for medication items to create an electronic record and a printed prescription.

Health supply system a world first

Thurs 9 Sept: Australia’s world-leading National Product Catalogue (NPC) was a feature at the GS1 Global Healthcare Conference in Geneva, in July. The system is one of the first in the world to focus exclusively on the needs of the healthcare industry. It offers a definitive national index of medical equipment and consumables, each with their own unique identification number, and is one of the cornerstones of Australia’s e-health infrastructure being developed by NEHTA.

Australia defines national access model

Thurs 9 Sept: NEHTA is leading the development of Australia’s first national security and access framework (SAF) to strengthen community confidence in the way e-health information systems, and their operators, handle patient data. The project will identify the standards, technical controls and business procedures needed to protect privacy and safeguard clinical information from unauthorised access or distribution. The first stage is currently underway with clinical, consumer, policy and technical experts working together to identify an initial concept that will be used as the base for more extensive community consultation.

New face on HL7 Australia board

Thurs 9 Sept: NEHTA has been invited to join the Health Level 7 Australia (HL7) advisory board to help progress national e-health standards and prepare for an international forum in Sydney next January 2011. Standards Manager Tina Connell-Clark has been co-opted to the board, as a non-voting advisor, to further develop the strong partnership that already exists between the two organisations.