The National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA), in collaboration with the ACT Government, has kicked off the trial of a medical supply and inventory system in the state.
The Master Catalogue Information Service (MCIS), part of the national program to streamline supply chain management within the Australian healthcare system, aims to provide a national uniform set of data around medication.
The system will be implemented in the ACT initially, due to the state’s single existing local system and “defined geography”, and will be expanded to other states and territories with which NEHTA is currently in discussions with.
A NEHTA spokesperson, told Computerworld Australia the system aims to assist different health departments and jurisdictions across Australia to automate validation, integration and synchronisation of the National Product Catalogue (NPC) data (published by suppliers), with the departments’ internal systems.
“This is a solution that requires a degree of integration with the local system data sets and existing processes; once implemented the data synchronisation is then automated between the local systems and the NPC,” the spokesperson said.
The NPC is managed operationally by GS1 along with numerous other verticals and the suppliers then manage the population of their product data to the NPC, which is then synchronised via the MCIS to the ACT Health source supply system.
ACT Chief Minister and Minister for Health, Katy Gallagher, the system has been designed to increase efficiency through reduction of product ordering errors and automation of inventory management processes. Additionally, Gallagher said it will improve the safety of patients by ensuring the right products are purchased at the right price and delivered at the right time and place.
"Purchasers and suppliers will automatically update internal systems from a central database of the latest product information and pricing data contained in the National Product Catalogue."
It will also improve access to information about product availability by clinical staff, and will better ACT Health’s ability to control the quality of medical products.
According to the NEHTA spokesperson, the local central data base exists for each state or territory (as it is implemented), which the NPC is then synchronised against to validate and integrate the data within the local source supply system.
It falls upon the specific jurisdiction or healthcare department, including private healthcare organisations, to partner with a chosen provider, which in the ACT is software developer Bizcaps.
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