Correction to Computerworld article May 30th 2006.
The Computerworld article "Vendor support call for e-health standards" published online on Tuesday 30th May by Michael Crawford contained many incorrect facts.On May 22 - 23 Standards Australia and NEHTA jointly hosted a two day event to examine vendor involvement in developing e-health standards. This event was one of a number of consultative processes presently being employed by NEHTA with a range of stakeholder groups.
In conjunction with this event, NEHTA also held Vendor Focus Sessions which provided vendors a forum to interactively provide feedback for aspects of the NEHTA work program. The sessions focussed on Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services; Compliance, Conformance and Certification; and Clinical Information (particularly discharge summaries). There was no detailed discussion of NEHTA’s work with respect to electronic health records, as stated by the article.
Further, the National E-Health Standards Development – A Management Framework document was produced by NEHTA and not the "Department of Health" as incorrectly noted in the article. NEHTA has not received any direction from any Department of Health in relation to this document.
Whilst the standards seminar highlighted the valuable input vendors have in the standards development process there was no discussion of vendor working groups contributing to a draft standards catalogue due to be published by NEHTA at the end of 2006. Additionally, the publication of clinical data specifications is not contingent upon the consensus procedure of Standards Australia.
Finally, it is incorrect to state that NEHTA "largely missed out" on funding through the 2006-07 Federal budget process, as the Federal Government committed $65 million towards NEHTA's initiatives through the COAG process (refer to "Key foundation of electronic health communication in place" press release). This was committed prior to the budget and not after, as stated by the article. The $128 million referred to in the article from the 2004-05 Federal budget does not relate to NEHTA's work program.