A Little Blast From The Past That Reminds Us How Slowly Things Have Moved in E-Health.

This was published three and a half years ago.

This is the year of delivery: NEHTA

Summary: The standards and foundations for nation-wide e-health solutions in Australia have now mainly been completed, according to National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) CEO Peter Fleming, leaving implementation on the agenda for 2009.

By Suzanne Tindal | January 27, 2009 -- 04:34 GMT (15:34 AEST)

The standards and foundations for nation-wide e-health solutions in Australia have now mainly been completed, according to National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) CEO Peter Fleming, leaving implementation on the agenda for 2009.

"I've actually been pleasantly surprised at a lot of the work that's been done in the background around foundation standards. We're actually starting from a very good position," Fleming told ZDNet.com.au. in an interview last week.

"The reality is, though, that we have to move very quickly into a delivery mode and that means implementing. In my expectation, well, this is the year of delivery for NEHTA."

NEHTA had an "absolute mandate" from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to deliver in individual healthcare identifiers (which link electronic medical records together), Fleming said, which the authority has been working together with Medicare on. "Medicare is extraordinarily well positioned to do this because of its history and very keen to make this work," he said.

Although creating the individual healthcare identifier for Australians meant a "fairly substantial database", Fleming said the difficulties were created by non-technical issues. There were privacy issues, work flow issues and overarching consumer and government requirements, he said. Legislative changes would also have to be made.

This year would also see a number of pilots, according to Fleming. "I am expecting that as the year progresses we will move very quickly around some fairly reasonable scale pilots around medication management and discharge referrals, and we are talking to a number of groups about that at the moment," he said.

Those waiting for an all-at-once implementation would go home disappointed, however. NEHTA would move ahead incrementally, Fleming said, with the authority consulting states, peak bodies and vendors along the way.

Lots more here:

http://www.zdnet.com/this-is-the-year-of-delivery-nehta-1339294585/

There is really some great reading in the rest of the article.

Heavens this has taken a long time!

Feel free to rate NEHTA’s performance via the comments.

David.