Research endorses strategic thrust

1 June 2010: A new report from leading management consultants Booz and Company indicates that an effective health IT system in Australia would save 5,000 lives and reduce annual health costs by $7.6 billion. This is a compelling argument for the work of the National E-Health Transition Authority which is the lead organisation responsible for driving the design and implementation of Australia’s national e-health infrastructure.

Established in 2004, and representing all Australian health jurisdictions through the State, Territory and Federal Governments, NEHTA operations fall into four strategic areas and are guided by the National E-Health Strategy.

Despite significant progress in e-health innovation over the past decade, in both the public and private sectors, technological change has been slow and difficult. The cost and complexity of integrating multiple business processes and software systems, across political boundaries and different healthcare environments, has highlighted the need for uniform national guidelines.

NEHTA was established to help the Australian community solve the problem and capitalise on the huge savings offered by an effective and efficient e-health system. In order for interoperability to succeed a suite of nationally-defined standards is essential as they allow e-health systems to develop without being constrained by the exclusive design of proprietary software products.

NEHTA has a crucial role in facilitating the development of these uniform specifications and standards so that technology components and software systems can link together, providing a seamless flow of accurate clinical information in a secure operating environment.

The National E-Health Strategy, released in December 2008, outlined four major priorities - foundations, e-health solutions, change and adoption and governance – each of which are reflected in NEHTA’s work program.

Foundation infrastructure covers the core building blocks for national software interoperability including:

  • Healthcare identifiers - the proposed series of 16 digit numbers which uniquely identify individual patients (IHI), healthcare providers (HPI-Is) and healthcare organisations (HPI-Os) in digital records and databases.
  • Terminology - standard glossaries of machine-readable medical terms based on the international SNOMED CT lexicon and the Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) which covers all pharmaceuticals approved for use in Australia.
  • Secure Messaging – the development of standards for the secure and accurate identification, authorisation and delivery of electronic messages between healthcare providers.
  • Authentication – development of national standards, processes and protocols to regulate system access and use of health information industry-wide.
  • Supply chain and e-procurement solutions, including the National Product Catalogue which currently list more than 100,000 medical devices and consumable products, each with a unique Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN).

These foundations underpin specific e-health solutions, the specifications for which are being developed to facilitate electronic data exchange needs in particular healthcare transactions. Currently, NEHTA is working on:

  • Continuity of care – these specifications cover the design of standard electronic Discharge Summaries and electronic Referrals between healthcare providers.
  • Pathology – a set of specifications governing the exchange of test data between laboratories and clinicians.
  • Medications Management – defining the electronic transfer of prescriptions between doctors and pharmacies.

In addition to designing the technical specifications for software developers to use, NEHTA is also responsible for building a robust governance framework addressing vital issues, such as privacy, conformity assessment of software products and clinical safety.

Once the core technologies are in place, it is NEHTA’s role to help the whole Australian community get onboard with e-health. A comprehensive change and adoption program is currently being developed to encourage implementation and uptake of the new systems on a coordinated national scale.

This technical infrastructure will pave the way for introduction of Australia’s first Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record , initial funding for which was included in the 2010 Federal Budget.