Priorities and initiatives

1.1.01: Develop and maintain a national secure messaging capability to enable the safe exchange of clinical documents

1.1.02: Continue roll out of Provider Connect Australia to ensure availability of up-to-date information about healthcare providers

1.1.03: Assist software vendors to connect residential aged care facilities to My Health Record

1.1.04: Connect multiple government services to newborn enrolment information by rolling out the Birth of a Child project nationally

1.1.05: Advance the use of electronic referrals, transfers of care and discharge summaries as business as usual

1.1.06: Update healthcare provider systems to strengthen and support electronic prescribing

1.1.07: Assist software vendors to connect allied health providers to My Health Record

1.1.08: Finalise clinical information system standards for residential aged care facilities

1.1.09: Enhance and expand advance care planning documents to support end-of-life decisions, ongoing care and treatment preferences

1.2.01: Implement the National Digital Health Capability Action Plan

1.2.02: Develop a digital health workforce readiness framework for organisations to self-assess and plan their digital health workforce development

1.2.03: Pilot and evaluate the national digital health capability framework and self-assessment tool to improve digital health skills of the health and care workforce in residential aged care facilities

1.2.04: Develop guidelines and resources for digital health learning, education and practice

1.2.05: Develop an online hub to host and connect curated digital health workforce content

1.2.06: Uplift digital health capabilities in primary care to improve interoperability between systems and streamline and simplify data access

1.2.07: Develop and operate digital solutions that support the career and learning pathways of healthcare providers and their mobility across the sector

1.3.01: Continue modernising digital health infrastructure including My Health Record with contemporary architectures to make information more accessible and discoverable

1.3.02: Develop accurate terminology, interoperability standards and conformance for sustained and widespread use

1.3.03: Develop Fast Health Interoperability (FHIR®) core standards that set the minimum requirements to support consistent capture and sharing of health information

1.3.04: Continue to implement standards and resilience measures to protect personal health information and digital health infrastructure from cyber-attack, natural disasters and climate events

1.3.05: Co-design technical, clinical terminology and exchange standards for a national electronic requesting capability for diagnostic imaging and pathology

1.3.06: Embed interoperability in procurement in accordance with national interoperability procurement guidelines

1.3.07: Mandate electronic prescribing for medicines that are high cost and/or high risk through updates to technology, standards and regulation

1.3.08: Increase digital maturity to enable efficient data collection, analysis and use of national clinical quality registries in line with the Framework for Australian Clinical Quality Registries

2.1.01: Co-design, deliver, promote and participate in consumer digital health literacy programs and integrate with broader government digital literacy programs

2.1.02: Use guidelines, such as the Assessment Framework for mHealth Apps, when developing consumer facing digital health products that meet a range of consumer needs and levels of digital health literacy

2.1.03: Undertake research and evaluate effectiveness of digital health literacy programs to inform program development

2.1.04: Consider digital health literacy in national safety and quality standards

2.2.01: Develop a National Health Information Exchange Architecture and Roadmap that will establish the national technical infrastructure requirements and direction to enable consistent, secure, safe and discoverable near real-time sharing of health information across care settings, with consent, regardless of where the data is stored

2.2.02: Enable consumers, carers and healthcare providers to access key aged care information such as the aged care assessment summary in My Health Record

2.2.03: Enable key health information to be made easily available to support transfer of care between residential aged care and acute care settings

2.2.04: Support Real Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) to provide clinical decision making support for prescribers and dispensers

2.2.05: Deliver a Prescription Delivery Service that supports the ongoing uptake of electronic prescribing, the expanded use of electronic medication charts and the use of electronic prescribing for high-risk and high-cost medicines

2.2.06: Support the use and expansion of electronic prescribing, including the delivery of operational support such as incident management for the Prescription Delivery Service

2.2.07: Establish regulatory requirements and changes to national accreditation standards to require private and public healthcare providers to share information to My Health Record by default, starting with diagnostic imaging and pathology. This will include providing technical and registration support, education and training

2.2.08: Expand functionality and health information available in the my health app to better support consumers, such as structured pathology, electronic prescriptions, aged care transfer summaries and Medicare information

2.2.09: Engage consumers in co-design and improvements to digital health solutions such as my health app and My Health Record

2.2.10: Develop a roadmap to support the allied health sector and software vendors to upload clinical content to My Health Record

2.2.11: Implement widespread adoption and use of national healthcare identifiers for individuals, healthcare providers and healthcare provider organisations

2.2.12: Connect hospital clinical information systems to the National Health Information exchange

2.2.13: Enable pregnancy and child health information to be shared and accessed through national digital health infrastructure

2.2.14: Uplift the Pharmacist Shared Medicines List to enable structured medicines information to be discoverable and available in the My Health Record System

2.2.15: Share information by default to support multidisciplinary care, including aged care plans and GP management plans

2.3.01: Support secure information sharing by enhancing authentication services

2.3.02: Identify options to develop a national health legislative framework authorising health information sharing across care settings and borders

2.3.03: Implement system changes to store and manage individual and organisational healthcare provider details

2.3.04: Progress integration between the national digital identity solution and healthcare systems

2.3.05: Review and implement regulatory requirements for consent management for access and use of patient health information

2.3.06: Ensure service provider details in healthcare provider directories are accurate and kept up to date

3.1.01: Provide digital solutions to support expanded delivery of home-based care, such as hospital delivered in the home and services provided in residential care facilities

3.1.02: Evaluate virtual care models, policy tools and mechanisms that support team-based, multidisciplinary primary and specialist care and identify opportunities for further investment

3.1.03: Identify, design and build digital capabilities required to improve and scale virtual care, particularly in rural and remote areas

3.2.01: Develop and design capabilities that support the sharing of health information from personal devices

3.2.02: Develop capabilities to enable healthcare provider systems to collect and display health information from personal devices

3.2.03: Incorporate standards and develop infrastructure to support the sharing of health information from personal devices with healthcare providers

3.2.04: Establish governance and a framework to support adoption, use of personal devices and sharing of personal health information

3.3.01: Support the design, development, and enhancement of digital infrastructure to enable integrated mental healthcare screening, assessment, navigation, referral and treatment

3.3.02: Identify options to improve data integration between the health and disability systems

3.3.03: Enhance digital systems and services that support team-based care for consumers registered with MyMedicare

3.3.04: Support the development of new digital health standards with a focus on priority use cases and emerging technologies

3.3.05: Align digital health plans and activities with actions in national, state, territory, and Coalition of Peaks Closing the Gap Implementation Plans

3.3.06: Engage consumers who experience barriers to healthcare access, and peak health and community organisations to uptake, access, use and co-design digital health solutions

4.1.01: Undertake and share research into digital health models of care to inform public health decisions and the translation of the models into clinical practice

4.1.02: Collect and share patient reported experience and outcomes data to inform decision making, shared care planning and care improvements

4.1.03: Deliver a data analytics capability and implement analytics programs to leverage identified data including for research and public health use once necessary governance and legislative arrangements are established

4.1.04: Australia to participate in discussions to harmonise global aligned standard on health technology exports and reduce costs associated with customising imported global products

4.1.05: Australia continue international cooperation to advance secure and interoperable digital health as a core focus of the the Global Digital Health Partnership and organisations including WHO, OECD, APEC and G20

4.1.06: Develop mechanisms to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have access to data held by government and other relevant entities to support local planning and decision making

4.1.07: Support the use of exploratory and simulation research activities to evaluate digital health solutions

4.1.08: Harmonise relevant policy and legislation across jurisdictions to support the safe and secure use of and access to health information

4.2.01: Develop plans for emerging and highly dimensional data such as AI, image analysis and genomics

4.2.02: Uplift national and jurisdictional digital health infrastructure to flexibly accommodate AI, machine learning, deep learning technologies and genomics

4.2.03: Monitor and identify emerging data sources and technology that support healthcare

4.2.04: Identify healthcare related opportunities and risks arising from broader, whole-of economy approaches to the regulation of AI

4.2.05: Support adoption of and regulate new medical technology including bioinformatics, AI and mixed reality in settings such as radiology, ophthalmology and triaging

4.2.06: Support implementation of data sharing frameworks for data such as genomics and for My Health Record

4.3.01: Measure, monitor and report on changes in digital health maturity, adoption, meaningful use and benefits to inform national and local planning

4.3.02: Participate in evaluations and provide feedback on experiences of digital health

4.3.03: Support increased digital health maturity, adoption and meaningful use through increased awareness of digital health benefits among consumers and healthcare providers

4.3.04: Increase access to and integration of clinical quality registries in the broader digital health ecosystem to support patient-centred care and clinical practice improvement