The agency is sinking its teeth into the more ‘meaty’ actions as we career towards the end of 2024.
The Australian Digital Health Agency says it is running “close to one year ahead of plan” as it continues to roll out its interoperability plan, due to be completed by 2028.
The National Healthcare Interoperability Plan 2023-28, published by the ADHA in July, established 44 actions and policy tools across five priority areas to facilitate the transition to an interoperable national health system over the next five years.
Key objectives included developing roadmaps for healthcare identifiers, facilitating centralised resource sharing, establishing guidelines and a conformance framework for ICT procurement, building the digital capability of the health workforce and designing a community platform for a digital health standards catalogue.
Speaking at the Medical Software Industry Association Summit in Sydney yesterday, chief digital officer for the ADHA Peter O’Halloran announced the release of the agency’s most recent quarterly report on the progress of the interoperability plan.
“It’s not as boring as most documents,” quipped Mr O’Halloran.
“The good news is, we are now, at this point in time, on track or ahead of schedule for all of our actions under the interoperability plan.
“We are now running close to one year ahead of time [for] this plan.”
While no additional actions were completed since the previous quarter – the total remains nine – three additional actions are now “on track” bringing the total to 31.
This included an action on terminology in digital health systems, which was behind schedule in the previous quarter due to the production release of AMTv4 (Australian Medicines Terminology) being pushed back.
AMTv4 was delivered on 26 September 2024.
“The updated Medicine Authoring Tool is now in production, with Australia being onboarded with SNOMED International’s Managed Service in May 2024,” reads the report.
“Engagement across the sector with aged care organisations, diagnostic industry, clinical information system vendors, clinical colleges and healthcare organisations around the adoption of the NCTS, Ontoserver and SNOMED CT remains ongoing as part of the adoption program.”
Four actions are yet to commence but are scheduled to commence later this financial year or next year as per the schedule.
Mr O’Halloran said some actions may require legislative change to progress.
“We’re now into some of the meaty ones, we’re working with our colleagues across jurisdictions, departments, Services Australia and the like,” he said.
“Some of the [actions] that are in there now require legislation change [to proceed], but we are making really good, solid progress and hopefully you will start to see that.”
The report outlined progress across the five priority areas: identity, standards, benefits, information sharing and innovation.
Identity
The report also included a progress update on the National Healthcare Identifiers Roadmap 2023-2028 which was published in July 2024.
The agency has begun to act on all 12 activities due to commence by 2024-25, out of the 20 total activities.
Mr O’Halloran said Australia was ahead of the curve when it came to health identifiers.
“We’ve had legislation for over a decade in Australia for health identifiers,” he said.
“If you talk to a number of other jurisdictions that do healthcare and probability, and we’ll pick on the US for a moment, the number one thing they say they wish they had was healthcare identifier legislation like Australia.
“The HI roadmap is really trying to see how we can take the intent of the legislation and actually get to where we all want it to be.”
Other progress included increased registration with Provider Connect Australia, which now has over 5000 registered healthcare service.
“The service has recently been upgraded to allow clinical and practice management software system to connect to the service through a SMART on FHIR interface,” reads the report.”
The agency also commenced the Director project on 1 July, the “first priority” within the Health Information Exchange architecture and roadmap, according to Mr O’Halloran.
“The existing Health Provider Directory will be enhanced and integrated with the National Health Services Directory and other core health directories to create a single access point for health and service information within the proposed national Health Information Exchange,” reads the report.
Standards
To enable the health information exchange, the agency is moving to collate agreed-upon digital health standards, specifications and terminology.
This work has included development of core set of FHIR standards, Sparked.
“The Sparked FHIR Accelerator program, a cooperative between the Agency, CSIRO, HL7 Australia and the Department of Health and Aged Care, has continued work to develop release 2 of the Australian Core Data for Interoperability and progress other work streams including eRequesting,” reads the report.
“Planning and initial workshops have been undertaken to support the development of an Australian version of the International Patient Summary.”
The agency also issued a tender request to build the capabilities to enable FHIR interoperability of My Health record.
Additional content has been added to the first version of the Digital Health Standards Catalogue after its initial publication in June 2024, to improve functionality.
Information sharing
The agency has published the Aged Care Clinical Information System Standards – recommended minimum software requirements for computer information systems in residential aged care homes – as well as the draft national HIE roadmap for public consultation.
Consultation on the draft Digital Health Procurement Guidelines, published in June 2024, is also ongoing.
Innovation
The Capability Action Plan 2024-2025 program is underway, focused on the higher education and vocational training sectors, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and the delivery of the Digital Health Workforce (Hub).
“There have been multiple events, workshops and Connectathons held so far in 2024-25 and opportunities to host additional interoperability challenges to accelerate standards adoption and implementation are being assessed,” reads the report.
“The agency has extended its contract with HL7 Australia for the delivery of the first tranche of FHIR training to support capability uplift and planning is underway for new course delivery for foundation courses and the development of new course materials.
“The agency has also published its library of Connected Care Education Resources that includes links to existing interoperability education content.”
Benefits:
The Council for Connected Care, that leads the interoperability plan, has met multiple times to review progress.
The next meeting, mid this month, will focus on older people.
There will be a national interoperability survey conducted in early 2025.