Funding announced for software innovators in general practice

19 November 2010. NEHTA today called for proposals from general practice clinical desktop software suppliers wishing to support the Federal Government’s first eHealth implementation sites in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The Request for Proposal will establish a panel of general practice clinical desktop vendors interested in working with NEHTA and the site project teams to incorporate new national eHealth specifications and standards into their existing products.

Successful panelists will be instrumental in helping to test and fine-tune initial specifications for the Personally-Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR). These are currently being defined by NEHTA in consultation with clinical, consumer and industry representatives.

The PCEHR is a landmark initiative in the National Health and Hospital Network Reform package which aims to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care and ensure long term sustainability of the healthcare system. More than $466m has been allocated by the Federal Government to deliver the first phase of the PCEHR enabling Australians to choose to register for an individual summary by the end of June 2012.
 
Last month, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing announced the first wave of eHealth sites which will be used to deploy and test the various eHealth components that make up the national infrastructure suite. Funding has been provided to the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice, in NSW, GP Partners Limited, in Queensland, and the Melbourne East General Practice Network Limited to work with NEHTA and community partners to implement PCEHR components that support sharing or aggregation of electronic health information at a geographic or sector level.
 
This experience will be systematically fed into the PCEHR work program, which is being managed by NEHTA on behalf of DOHA, to help mature the specifications used in constructing the national PCEHR system. Together they will define the standards to which health IT systems will be expected to conform and which are the key to interoperability between a myriad of different information systems operating in healthcare.
 
The general practice clinical vendor panel will be instrumental in delivering effective, reliable and financially viable software solutions to healthcare providers. Successful participants will work collaboratively with NEHTA to support both the lead sites and progressive development of the national standards.
 
Funding will be provided to all panelists to help offset their modification costs. This will comprise an initial payment, once a software product has successfully passed conformity assessment and a deployment and support payment for each medical practice within the Wave 1 lead sites that successfully takes up the product. Payments will be consistent across all successful panelists and will be established through independent moderated negotiation with the key peak bodies and led by Deloitte. On completion of the moderation process, preferred vendors will be invited to enter into a contract with NEHTA.
 
The eHealth sites aim to improve continuity of patient care by facilitating the electronic exchange of high priority clinical information between care providers, particularly discharge summaries, specialist letters, referrals, health summaries and medications management including the electronic transfer of prescriptions. Core technical foundations, such as healthcare identifiers, secure messaging, CDA messaging formats and clinical terminologies, will need to be implemented to support these information flows. Additional functions, such as pathology orders and results, may be introduced in future Wave 2 sites.
 
It is expected a finite set of technical specifications will be available to vendors between December 2010 and March 2011 and panelists will be instrumental in contributing to these. From March 2011 vendors will be required to embed these into their products making allowance for modification in line with experience gathered on the ground at the lead sites.
 
Register your interest by emailing: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
An industry briefing will be held at The Marriott, 30 Pitt Street, Sydney at 2pm on Wednesday 24 November 2010. For those unable to attend in person a web conference will also be available. Please RSVP to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by Monday 22 November to advise whether attending or to obtain web conference details. Only registered vendors may attend the briefing or web conference. The Request for Proposal closes at 5pm AEDST on Wednesday 15 December 2010. Shortlisting of respondents is expected to be completed before the end of December with final panel contracts in place before March 2011.  
 
Media contact: Alison Sweeney Media Coordinator 02 8298 2669 or 0414 187 350 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it