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Media releases • General

National Digital Health Strategy March updates

Published 4 March 2020

The Service Registration Assistant and the Child Digital Health Record proof of concept are coming soon.

Service Registration Assistant (SRA)

The new Service Registration Assistant – now in the evaluation phase – can reduce paperwork, keep healthcare practice details accurate and improve patient outcomes and experiences. It offers immediate benefits for healthcare organisations by reducing the burden of needing to complete the same details across many different forms.

The Service Registration Assistant supports an integrated experience through clinical information systems that use the FHIR API or through the SRA portal for non-integrated users.

The SRA has two key roles. Namely:

  • Publisher (organisation who wishes to share their details)
  • Subscriber (external service or directory who wishes to receive publisher details)

Production use began in late 2019 and completion of the release will incorporate features required for the proof of concept. The participants and the current update of their involvement includes:

  • Best Practice (Publisher: Integrated CIS) – enhanced software released for use
  • CorePlus (Publisher: Integrated CIS) – development in progress
  • Healthlink (Subscriber) – development completed, final stages of onboarding
  • Telstra Health (Subscriber) – development completed, final stages of onboarding
  • HealthDirect (Subscriber) – SRA/NHSD solution details being finalised
  • SONIC Healthcare (Subscriber) – planning phase
  • Northern NSW Local Health District (Publisher & Subscriber) – development completed, final stages of onboarding

North Coast PHN is leading the ‘on the ground’ work. Through engagement and support activities, they’re assisting participating organisations to register and use the solution. To date, 20 organisations have registered throughout Northern NSW.

What’s next?

The project is currently in the recruitment phase. The Agency is focused on onboarding additional subscriber companies and progressing with the engagement of participating organisations. Our target is to have one hundred organisations onboard, as this will help us gauge the value and viability of the solution.

After determining the level of success in April, a business case supporting the national scaling may be developed for decision-making by June 2020.

Child Digital Health Record (0 to 4 years) proof of concept

The Agency, eHealth NSW and the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network have together created the Children’s Digital Health Collaborative. The collaboration is focused on improving the health and wellbeing of Australian children and young people through the use of digital technologies.

It has engaged with over 1,000 participants including:

  • Consumers
  • Clinicians
  • Health and social care provider organisations
  • Researchers
  • Jurisdictions
  • Information and communication technology industry partners

The Collaborative is co-designing, implementing and evaluating proof of concepts for the following national initiatives in support of children’s health and wellbeing:

  • Next generation scalable interoperability platform
  • Child Digital Health Record (0 to 4 years)
  • Child Digital Health Record (5 to 15 years)
  • Digital Pregnancy Health Record

Two GP clinics in Blacktown and Dubbo will be trialling the concept in the middle of 2020. During the trial, participants will visit the GPs who will undertake a child health assessment. The information will be uploaded via the GP’s practice management software and will flow into a centralised data hub. Once in the centralised data hub, participants can view the information via a mobile application.

The Agency is developing a business case to assess the proof of concept and determine options for national scaling. Discover more here.

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