Recent concerns about the Nipah virus1 are a timely reminder that another pandemic is inevitable. There’s been five pandemics over the last 60 years2 – an average of one every 12 years – and this year it’s seven years since COVID locked down the world.
So, are we better prepared?
The Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) formally commenced operation in 20263, to bring together experts, data and evidence to give independent public health advice to government. This centralised response should alleviate all the angst created by different public health advice and management across the States.
However, the data the CDC relies upon remains disjointed and inconsistent. There are dozens of Laboratory Information Systems and instances used by public and private laboratories across Australia; different brands, with different configurations, data formats and codes for tests and results; making consolidation a complex and time-consuming process that takes days.
We can’t manage a pandemic if we can’t track it in real time.
The Australian Digital Health Agency tackles this issue in the National Healthcare Interoperability Plan4 which focuses on healthcare organisations achieving data sharing interoperability through the development and adoption of standards and specifications including Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).
The Australian Government committed $9.3 million in 2023/24 and an additional $1.8 million in 2024/25 for CSIRO to accelerate the development and adoption of national FHIR5 standards for healthcare data exchange. An independent report by Voronoi in 20256 noted the standards developed to date are “fit-for-purpose” but adoption is slow due to the lack of incentives for change.
A CSIRO report titled Strengthening Australia’s Pandemic Preparedness7, states:
“While the (National Healthcare Interoperability) Plan sets the direction for a nationally coordinated future state for the entire health system, there are opportunities for technology-enabled interventions that can be implemented in parallel with the Plan to satisfy data sharing needs for pandemic preparedness.”
One such technology intervention that should be considered is a system the UK use called Labgnostic (aka the National Pathology Exchange or NPEx) by X-Lab Systems8.
Labgnostic is a highly secure, system agnostic data translation service that takes data from individual LISs and transforms it into the formats required by other LISs, government agencies and data repositories. It doesn’t matter that the data comes from different IT systems, in different formats, using different communication protocols – Labgnostic manages this complexity, enabling healthcare organisations to share data instantly.
Labgnostic also streamlines connectivity and maintenance. Instead of a complex web of point-to point interfaces, each lab connects once to the Labgnostic network, which allows it to exchange data with all other labs and government agencies.
During the pandemic, the NHS mandated the use of Labgnostic for all labs doing COVID19 testing so they could achieve immediate interoperability9. X-Lab onboarded 41 labs in just six weeks, scaling Labgnostic from doing an average of 1,000 tests a day to a peak of $11 million a week, with capacity to do even more.
Labgnostic was the work engine that collected results from all 180 LIS instances and delivered results to labs and a range of government agencies, in their preferred format, in real time. It was this infrastructure that enabled the NHS to track the spread and intensity of the virus, so they could make informed and timely pandemic management decisions.
In the meantime, there’s a lot of operational benefits that could be realised now – reductions in paper, manual data entry, duplication, transcription errors and patient risk, all of which lead to better resource utilisation, increased throughput, faster turnaround times and improved patient outcomes.
The economic benefits of health information exchange interoperability for Australia were modelled in 2007 with Level 4 interoperability benefits estimated at $2,990 million – of which laboratory benefits account for 39%, or $1,180 million10, each and every year post implementation.
If a new pandemic hit tomorrow, we could have a national pathology exchange operational in weeks but wouldn’t it be better to do this now so we are ready and our society can reap the benefits in the meantime?
1. https://www.news.com.au/world/nipah-virus-threat-very-serious-health-minister-warns/news story/4cbe4be09913dba65e1e89b774c006fb
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8525686/
3. https://www.cdc.gov.au/newsroom/news-and-articles/australias-new-cdc-becomes-law 4. National Healthcare Interoperability Plan
5. https://sparked.csiro.au/index.php/about-sparked/sparked story/#:~:text=CSIRO%20is%20responsible%20for%20coordinating%20the%20community,is%20criti cal%20for%20the%20success%20of%20Sparked.
6. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-01/sparked-program-review-evaluation report-2023-2025.pdf
7. https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/services/consultancy-strategic-advice-services/csiro futures/health-and-biosecurity/strengthening-australias-pandemic-preparedness
8. www.x-labsystems.com/labgnostic/
9.https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/05/nhs_digital_8m_contract_xlab/#:~:text=Leeds%2Dbase d%20X%2DLab%20is,and%20cases%20in%20their%20areas.
10. The economic benefits of health information exchange interoperability for Australia – PubMed
