NEHTA
NEHTA Limited is a not-for-profit company established by Australian Health Ministers to develop national e-health standards and infrastructure requirements for the electronic collection and secure exchange of health information.
These requirements will then be adopted by the Australian, State and Territory Governments in their own e-health systems. This common national approach will set the necessary foundations for the widespread and rapid adoption of e-health across the national health sector.
In setting its requirements, NEHTA considers the most suitable standards and specifications from Australia and around the world, adapting them if necessary to suit the Australian context. If the necessary standards, specifications or infrastructure do not already exist, NEHTA is tasked to commission them.
NEHTA currently has a set of related initiatives underway to deliver a secure, interoperable e-health environment. The overall work program involves:
- Establishing an overarching framework for the operation of an interoperable e-health system, through the Interoperability Framework Initiative.
- Within this framework, electronic health records will be established according to the design principles set by NEHTA’s health record design initiative. These records will enable authorised health care providers to access an individual’s health care history, directly sourced from clinical information such as test results, prescriptions and clinician notes. Individuals will also be able to access their own health record.
- By using a standardised vocabulary to describe diagnoses, procedures, therapies and other terms, health care providers will be able to consistently interpret the clinical information. Terminologies will be standardised by NEHTA's clinical terminologies and medicines terminology work.
- Other important clinical documentation, such as patient referrals and hospital discharge summaries, will be able to be sent electronically directly between healthcare providers. The security of this exchange will be assured by NEHTA’s secure messaging initiative.
- The format of the clinical information being exchanged or shared will be standardised according to the specifications set by NEHTA's clinical information initiative.
- The identity of healthcare providers accessing the above information will be established through the health care provider identifier initiative, and confirmed by NEHTA developed user authentication standards.
- With the development of a unique identifier the possibility of clinical information being assigned to the wrong patient will be significantly reduced as a result of the individual healthcare identifier.
- Privacy protection and patient consent will be built into the above as a result of the work done in NEHTA’s e-health consent initiative.
- Through the standards implementation initiative NEHTA will develop a framework for obtaining the involvement of local and international standards organisations to support implementation of the above.
- In addition, NEHTA's supply chain initiative will pursue opportunities for supply chain reform across the health sector.
For more information visit www.nehta.gov.au