The Northern Territory Department of Health and Families (DHF) has implemented an enterprise grade e-health integration hub across its entire jurisdiction.
The hub, provided by InterSystems, will allow connected healthcare applications in the Northern Territory to utilise clinical data from other systems and provide a single point of integration for each application with an architecture that simplifies the task of creating and maintaining interfaces.
DHF CIO, Stephen Moo, said the agency’s aim was to create an e-health hub to ensure healthcare providers could share clinical information easily and securely for the best healthcare outcomes.
"[InterSystems’] Ensemble was selected on its ability to integrate with systems in diverse healthcare settings in the Northern Territory,” Moo said in a statement. “These include 58 DHF staffed public health facilities, 10 DHF visiting/mobile services, 31 non-DHF remote health facilities, over 120 private practices, 200 specialists, five public hospitals and one private hospital."
According to Moo, additional healthcare support services requiring integration include allied health, aged care, pathology, diagnostic imaging, pharmaceutical and ambulance.
"Delivering high quality, integrated patient care is a complex challenge in the Territory, given our demographic and geographic challenges," he said. "Without appropriate technological support, we would not be able to provide the level of care our patients and clients require."
The hub will build upon the state’s recently deployed secure messaging delivery system in line with the National E-Health Transition Authority’s (NEHTA) national standards.
The hub will also align with national services including the individual healthcare identifiers, healthcare provider identifiers, the personally controlled electronic health records (PCEHR) and the National Authentication Service for Health (NASH), currently being developed by IBM Australia.
The $23.6 million contract with IBM, to last until 30 June 2012, was awarded by the NEHTA and followed an extensive tender first launched in September last year.
In February, NEHTA was awarded funding of $38.5 million for a six month period to 30 June this year – the latest tranche of the total $466.7 million in funding from the Federal Department of Health and Ageing for the next stage of the PCEHR project.
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