iSOFT Demonstrates Progress at the NEHTA GP Desktop Vendor Panel [AU]
Presenting at the NEHTA GP Desktop Vendor Panel on 6 December 2011, iSOFT demonstrated progress in preparing the practiX software to communicate health information according to the new NEHTA eHealth specifications.
Earlier this month, iSOFT, a CSC company, presented at the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) GP Desktop Vendors Panel in Sydney. The purpose of the meeting was to review the progress of the six vendors participating in the project to prepare GP practice management software to communicate with hospital and specialist systems as part of the Federal Government’s PCEHR project. The first milestones in the project are to enable the applications to look up Individual Health Identifiers (IHI), accept discharge information and specialist letters – foundational elements of the Australian Government’s eHealth agenda.
Presenting along with iSOFT at the NEHTA panel were GP desktop vendors; Best Practice, Communicare, Genie, Medtech and Zedmed. Vendors demonstrated or explained the work they had been doing to enable their GP desktop systems to communicate health information according to the NEHTA specifications.
Each vendor showed evidence of progress against NEHTA’s milestones in preparation for implementation at the first GP sites early in 2012.
“As our eHealth solutions span primary, community, aged and tertiary care, we felt it was important to take an open and health system wide approach to meeting the NEHTA specifications. Using our iSOFT HIE Suite we are building interoperable components, that can work across iSOFT solutions and that are available to any application following the same NEHTA specifications,” explained James Rice, iSOFT APAC Managing Director.
“This open approach is of great advantage to state governments looking to implement Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) across a health care system. Using iSOFT’s open Health Information Exchange (HIE) architecture, state departments of health will be able to identify and manage patients across multiple eHealth systems.”
Talking about the wider effort at iSOFT to achieve connectivity between applications, iSOFT’s Rice said, “Most recently we have used our HIE Suite to also enable our widely implemented Patient Management System (i.PM) for the HI without the need for customers to upgrade the core product. This is another example of the agility such a solution provides iSOFT and our customers.”
All vendors have now met the Wave I Release 1 requirements for use of healthcare identifiers. In addition to identifiers, iSOFT has achieved CCA conformance testing for the Secure Message Delivery (SMD) functionality. The SMD capability is part of the Release 2 functionality due 31 January, 2012.
iSOFT demonstrated the practiX GP desktop software interacting with the Medicare Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) database to retrieve a new 16-digit IHI number and associate it with a specific patient record. This functionality is the basis for the national eHealth reforms as it enables the secure sharing of health data across health care sectors.
Once implemented at the first GP sites participating in the project, this functionality will enable the sending and receiving of electronic referrals, as well as the receiving of electronic discharge summaries from hospitals.
Often, following a patient’s discharge from hospital, there is little or no communication between the hospital and the GP. This can be a dangerous situation. When a GP does not know of diagnoses, treatments or medications a patient was given while in hospital, it is difficult to provide follow-up care. These first NEHTA specifications target this weakness in the system and will greatly improve communication between care settings and therefore care quality.
“Our vision is for a system of coordinated care in Australia that makes it easier for healthcare professionals to access and share information about the patients they care for. Today we are putting in place the foundations that will realise this vision,” added iSOFT’s Rice.
iSOFT will demonstrate and explain the results of these efforts at a webinar on 24 January 2012.
About iSOFT a CSC Company
iSOFT provides e-health solutions that assist healthcare professionals to deliver coordinated patient care that is safer, better and less expensive. In the Asia Pacific region, iSOFT targets the logistics of care with localized solutions to improve patient flow, access to clinical information, medication safety and pathology diagnostics. iSOFT participates in regional government health information exchange initiatives to connect care across care environments and to enable clients to leverage existing e-health investments. For more information, visit the iSOFT ANZ website: http://www.isofthealth.com/en-AU/default.aspx
About CSC
CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 93,000 employees and reported revenue of $16.2 billion for the 12 months ended July 1, 2011. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.csc.com
