Blog: A shoebox of PDFs and the Prod Comm’s dodgy figures

In what has been a massive week for digital health in Australia – a new authority set up to implement NSW Health’s $1 billion SDPR just as the CIO departs, thousands flock to a hugely successful Digital Health Festival in Melbourne, a couple of state budgets and the launch of Pulse, the podcast, which is destined to rule the airwaves – the Productivity Commission’s research paper on the savings to be seen from better implementing digital technology in healthcare certainly topped it all off.

The paper, Leveraging digital technology in healthcare, is a fascinating, positive look at the promise of digital technology in healthcare and how governments can help facilitate the digital transformation of health, concentrating in particular on electronic health and medical records, telehealth, remote monitoring and AI.

It measures the savings being gained by telehealth (mainly in terms of reduced travel and waiting time for GP patients); the benefits of digital technology including AI on workforce tasks (estimates as high as 30 per cent of workers’ time); and some huge savings through the roll-out of electronic medical records in improving workflow efficiencies and reducing duplication of tests.

There was also some much needed dismantling of 12 years of puffery over the potential of the My Health Record, adopting the now legendary “shoebox of PDFs” description of the system by Tasmanian GP Donald Rose in his submission to the Senate inquiry into the system in 2018.

But it was the figures about potential annual savings by using EMR systems and reducing duplicated tests that caught our eye. According to Commissioner Catherine de Fontenay, “making better use of data in electronic medical records systems can save up to $5.4 billion per year by reducing the length of time patients spend in hospital, and $355 million in duplicated tests in the public hospital system alone”.

We have some experience with grand claims of massive savings, including those for electronic health records like My Health Record. Back in 2016, then health minister Sussan Ley was spruiking annual savings of $2.8 billion through reduced adverse events and test duplication by using MyHR, with potential savings of $7.6 billion over four years.

Even further back in the day, we remember our old mates from Deloitte estimating that the net direct benefit of a national electronic health record that came to be called the PCEHR were expected to be worth approximately $11.5 billion over 15 years by reducing avoidable hospital admissions and GP visits.

The Prod Comm paper does make the distinction between an EMR and an EHR – while taking a particular delight in trashing the history of the My Health Record – but we do take issue with its methodology. While it did look at international studies on reductions in pathology and radiology tests following the introduction of an inpatient EMR, and how they can shorten length of stay in both admitted and emergency care, the evidence doesn’t really stack up for Australia.

The Prod Comm has taken figures on reduction rates in ED length of stay and in duplicated tests from those experienced by Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital following its implementation of Epic in 2016. As there are no similar figures from other implementations in Australia, it has assumed that RCH’s experience can be replicated in other hospitals.

We take issue with this. RCH’s implementation is an exemplary one that has shown quite remarkable outcomes, but the hospital is a relatively small one at 340 beds and it is a paediatric hospital. Its neighbours in Parkville – a large and complex adult hospital, a maternity hospital and a cancer centre – all use the same system but have yet to report any savings. Nowhere else in Australia, including states like NSW and Queensland that have had EMRs for years, have reported anything close to RCH.

“We assume that the reduction rates are a result only of the EMR system implementation and that this reduction holds true across all types of public hospitals, not only paediatric hospitals,” the report says, somewhat dubiously. “To overcome the absence of sector-wide data on EMR use in hospitals, we measure benefits assuming a current public hospital uptake of EMRs with functionality akin to that of the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.”

$5.4 billion in annual savings is certainly a headline figure – and the Australian Financial Review thundered about it – but it is just an estimate based on what we think are somewhat dodgy assumptions.

That said, the paper is a pretty good one that takes aim at years of underuse and underperformance of My Health Record, while making some recommendations on how to improve it, most of which the Australian Digital Health Agency is already doing under the modernisation program. There are some errors that the digital health community will notice – apparently, people are being paid to upload data to My Health Record – but it is a good shot in the arm for sector. You can read it here.

Elsewhere, the Digital Health Festival was in full swing this week. This has morphed from a tiny do a couple of years ago to a real player and was thoroughly enjoyable, although there was a bit too much vendor flimflam for our liking. This was balanced out by the launch of the soon to be legendary Pulse podcast and some good stuff from actual digital health projects and implementations, the best of which for us was Kath Feely’s talk on sharing data with patients at the Parkville precinct. It was terrific.

It was also one of our most popular stories for the week, but the top spot went to the announcement of the head of a new implementation authority for the NSW SDPR, just as one of the driving forces behind the project, eHealth NSW CEO and NSW Health CIO Zoran Bolevich, decided to up sticks after eight years and head to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. After eight years in the gig at eHealth we don’t blame him, but it is an unusual time to be heading off.

We asked your thoughts on the SDPR implementation authority in last week’s poll, where readers were split 52:48 in favour of the new authority. Here’s what you said.

This week, we are asking:

Do you agree with the PC’s estimate of savings through digital technology?

Vote here and leave your comments below.

NSW Health CIO Bolevich jumps ship to AIHW

NSW Health CIO and eHealth NSW CEO Zoran Bolevich has been appointed to lead the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

Dr Bolevich leaves eHealth NSW after eight years and as it sets out on one of the largest digital health transformations in the Southern Hemisphere, the massive $1 billion single digital patient record (SDPR).

Dr Bolevich was crucial in securing funding for the project, which will see the Cerner and Orion Health EMRs replaced with a statewide Epic system across 225 hospitals, as well as a new Epic patient administration system and a new laboratory information system for NSW Health Pathology.

In his tenure at eHealth NSW, Dr Bolevich oversaw the NSW Health’s 10-year eHealth strategy and a multimillion-dollar build of NSW Health’s digital infrastructure.

He takes over at AIHW from Rob Heferen, who is the commissioner of taxation at the ATO.

DHF24: Austin Health trials telehealth booth in ED waiting room

Melbourne’s Austin Health has trialled the use of a custom-designed telehealth booth within its emergency department waiting room, with a direct audio-visual link to the Victorian Virtual ED (VVED) service to see if it could divert low acuity patients who turn up at ED.

The service has since recorded some impressive figures, with less than two per cent of those using the telehealth pod referred back to ED. However, there has been minimal improvement in overall ED waiting times.

Director of Austin Hospital’s emergency department Michael Ben-Meir told the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne yesterday that a telehealth booth was set up in a small alcove in the ED waiting room, using a customised kiosk adopted from the sound recording industry.

The booth was retrofitted to make it safe for infection control with adequate ventilation and as few detachable pieces of equipment as possible, as well as a means to communicate any alarms.

It has a large touch screen with a direct link to the VVED service, and to the Heidelberg Priority Primary Care Centre, when the pod was first installed in mid-2023.

Associate Professor Ben-Meir said patients triaged as low acuity were encouraged to use the telehealth service instead of enduring a long waiting.

“The lower your acuity, generally the longer you wait.”

“We know from other services that low acuity emergency cases can be very well managed virtually,” he said. “So is there an opportunity, we asked, to use the service for those who had already arrived.

Austin Health partnered with VVED for the trial and used VVED branding on the booth, as well as green lights to show the booth was occupied.

Early data from staff surveys showed there were some positives but the challenges were not insignificant, A/Prof Ben-Meir said. Education and training for triage nursing staff was required, and encouragement was needed to have patients directed to use the booth.

There were also issues with interoperability of clinical systems, with an inability to transmit data from the Austin triage to VVED. A/Prof Ben-Meir said the transferability of data would make it a much better experience.

Another challenge was that 75 per cent of patients had never heard of or used a virtual ED.

The positives included the low return rate – 73 per cent were discharged back to home in the early stages – and it now has a two per cent or less referral rate back to ED.

Patients thought the quality of the service was very high, and it was also shown to be a safe, viable and effective diversion approach. It is also a good option for hospitals that don’t have much space.

DHF24: ADHA to release national health identifiers roadmap

A roadmap showing the way to increase the adoption and use of Australia’s Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service is due to be published shortly, laying out steps to take to improve uptake of the service following two legislative reviews.

Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) chief digital officer Peter O’Halloran told the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne yesterday that the HI plan would identify what needs to change with healthcare identifiers, setting out 20 actions to be taken.

Mr O’Halloran said the latest quarterly update to the National Healthcare Interoperability Plan 2023-2028 had also been released, which shows that the HI plan is awaiting inter-jurisdictional sign-off before publishing. A communication plan is being developed to coordinate messaging and engagement activities between ADHA, the Department of Health and Aged Care and Services Australia, it says.

Services Australia is working on a Healthcare Identifiers (HI) data and service enhancement project to deliver improvements to the HI Service, due in mid 2024.

The update also says intergovernmental collaboration to increase the use of healthcare identifiers and health service directories is in train to support national programs such as the health information exchange, electronic prescribing, electronic requesting, and sharing by default for pathology and diagnostic imaging reports.

Mr O’Halloran also said the Council for Connected Care, which was set up last year to provide strategic advice to ensure implementation of the plan, had also met again last week to the innovation and benefits priority areas.

A review of digital maturity assessment frameworks with a focus on models relevant to interoperability was also discussed.

DHF24: ePrescription tokens and ASL to be added to my health app

The my health app will be upgraded with a number of releases over the coming year that will see a consolidated view of medical conditions added to the app as well as electronic prescription tokens by Christmas and Active Script List (ASL) functionality in the new year.

There are also plans to add a barcode scanning function for medications that can bring up consumer medicines information (CMI) on the app, which provides direct access to the user’s My Health Record as well as Healthdirect services such as the National Health Services Directory, the symptom checker and a find a provider function.

Australian Digital Health Agency chief digital officer Peter O’Halloran told the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne that work was underway to add a booking capability to the find a provider function as well as a recall function in future.

Mr O’Halloran said there had been a number of releases since the app went live in February 2023 but this year would see a number more aimed at making the app a digital front door to the Australian health system.

“The agency is not duplicating this content, we’re not creating it ourselves,” Mr O’Halloran said. “We’re working with people who already have content, who have essential pieces of information and services that tie the healthcare system together to actually bring that to a single place where a consumer can go: ‘I’m not feeling great, I’ll check my symptoms, I’ve got an allergy, what’s on my list, I can see those, I can book in with my GP’.

“We’re bringing all that together in a single place. We’re thinking about how do we actually create this as a digital front door.”

The new features include the consolidated view of medical conditions, which Mr O’Halloran said was extracting information from some of the core clinical documents in My Health Record.

In addition to adding eScript tokens to make it easier for them to be located, active script lists will be available on the app, with the potential to be able to register for an ASL and have access to an ASL if for carer nominated representatives.

“We are working on putting features and functionality into the app that make it easier for everyone to access the health care system,” he said. “We’ll have the record of the GP visit, you’ll have your My Health Record, we’ve got the find and book and everything from National Health Services Directory from Healthdirect, and now you’ve got the ePrescribing tokens in there, you’ll have an active script list.

“We’ll link in to consuming medicines information, we’ll give you the ability to scan a pack of medications, read the barcode on it, and actually then retrieve the consumer medicine information … to help you find that information, to see what the allergies are, to see what the CMI is. And then eventually longer term, how we put things like recalls.

“This is really where interoperability comes to the fore. How do we take all those discrete separate pieces of information, those separate services or separate functions and interactions, bring them together in a single place, so that it’s easier for all of us to interact with the healthcare system.”

“It will also be a whole lot easier when ‘share by default’ is in place and we have ubiquitous access to things like our diagnostic imaging reports and our pathology reports.”

The agency is currently working on modernising the My Health Record to convert it to a FHIR-based repository and is looking at how to take atomic data and make it available, as well as how to go backwards and look at converting the existing data so it can be used a lot more.

“But today, you can see your My Health Record, you can find health services, you can book a GP appointment, you can look up medicines information. Soon, you’ll have some new dashboards and a few other features that we’re not talking about yet but there’ll be lots of new exciting announcements in the next couple of months.

“And then before Christmas, we’ll have a ePrescribing tokens in there. Next year, we’ll have active script lists all things with those all work together, slowly bringing forward all those pieces of the healthcare system to join them together to make the journey easier to present the information that makes sense to consumers where and when they need it.”

DHF24: Sharing data with patients the Parkville Precinct way

Three hospitals in Melbourne’s Parkville Precinct are set to open up access to their Health Hub patient portal to inpatients following overwhelmingly positive reviews of the technology and a recent finding that 70 per cent of people who have used the portal thought their technology experience improves their overall health.

Royal Melbourne Hospital, Royal Women’s Hospital and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre use the MyChart portal from their EMR vendor Epic to power the Health Hub, which allows patients to manage their appointments, schedule their next appointment, and view details of their past and upcoming appointments. It also allows them to access their test results and their doctor’s comments.

The Health Hub had a soft launch in 2020 following pioneering work by fellow Parkville resident Royal Children’s Hospital, which has used a patient portal called My RCH using Epic’s technology since it went live in 2016.

Parkville Precinct chief allied health information officer (CAHIO) Kath Feely told the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne yesterday that uptake of the technology, patient surveys and positive reactions showed that patients were wanted access to their information and thought it would benefit their health outcomes. They were also willing to share sensitive information using the technology. Clinicians, on the other hand, are still cautious, she said.

“As consumers, as a society, we are ready to be able to access our health care information,” Ms Feely said. “But one of the biggest things is clinician resistance. We as clinicians are worried about our older patients and whether they have tech literacy skills. And we as clinicians are worried that it’s going to cause our patients anxiety.”

Australia is also doing a bad job of sharing information with patients, she said. Sweden has been sharing information from hospitals since 2011 through a health information exchange, which was fully rolled out in 2018.

The USA mandates that if hospitals do not share their EMR information they are fined. In the UK, which has a portal for appointments and prescriptions since 2018, GPs are now obliged to provide all of their documentation to their patients so people can see their health journey.

“In Australia, we do have My Health Record. As of February 2023, there were 23.8 million My Health Records in Australia, and of those, six million or about 25 per cent have been viewed from the start of time. We still have a lot of people who haven’t actually looked at this information ever.”

The Parkville journey to information sharing began in 2016 with RCH’s Epic implementation and the My RCH portal. When the other three hospitals chose to adopt the RCH EMR in 2018, they set up patient portal advisory committees to make sure that consumers were involved in deciding what was the information that they would be able to access, Ms Feely said.

All three hospitals agreed to that the components that would be shared included medications, after visit summaries, letters, results, appointments and patient-entered information.

And each service could then decide itself on whether to release information from secure messaging, questionnaires for PROMs and PREMS, outpatient notes, interactive virtual care and inpatient notes.

Due to COVID, a soft launch was held in 2020, but activation rates quickly went up when patients began to want to know their test results as soon as possible.

The precinct also worked on a project about what sort of information patients themselves were willing to share, following a change from the government in how health services capture gender and sex at birth.

Using a co-design approach with clinicians and consumers who had lived experience representing the community, the project allowed patients to provide information through the portal that they wanted to tell the hospital about their preferred name, gender identity and sexuality. Clinicians can also ask these questions and that is entered into the EMR in the same place.

If the person is admitted, they receive a referral to RMH’s LGBTQIA+ liaison service for support. And if the patient chooses, a rainbow flag will be displayed on their patient portal.

“To date we’ve had 12,000 people at Royal Melbourne Hospital give us the information, and 70 per cent of these told us through the portal because they wanted us to know. They thought it was important we knew this information. We found that preferred name and sexuality are the most common bits of information that they’re wanting to tell us.”

After the success of the diversity project, Parkville developed a disability identification questionnaire using the same process, and has since had 10,000 people who have identified as having a disability. Again, 70 per cent of them provided the information through the portal. The next project will involve First Nations people.

The portal is now being used for home enteral nutrition (HEN) virtual care, and according to Ms Feely, the next big step is starting to have portal access for an inpatient while they’re in the bed in the hospital.

“Now we are having clinicians go weak at the knees, so we’re having to think about what is the training that we’re going to have to give our clinicians to upskill them to feel comfortable giving the information that consumers want.”

“Patients are ready for the change. We’ve done a patient technology satisfaction survey, we had around 3000 patients complete, and we’ve done a clinician perspective survey. I think we had over 3000 complete that. And then we’ve also done some uptake use which we can just report straight from the EMR.”

The survey of clinicians’ perspective of whether the patient portal is beneficial for patients showed that they can see the value of having a patient portal, but that the benefit for their own particular role is very low at around 20 per cent.

Patients, on the other hand, see the benefits. “At Royal Melbourne Hospital, 75 per cent of our outpatient notes are shared to the portal, automatically shared. At the moment, 40 per cent of all patients who were seen in the last 12 months at Royal Melbourne Hospital are using the portal.

“The Epic international average is 56 per cent, but if they’ve been to the hospital three times in the last 12 months, or more than three times, we’re up to at least half of those patients are using the portal.

“A survey of 800 patients showed us 94 per cent of the patients are satisfied with the patient portal and are likely to recommend it to others, which we know this is a great measure.

“Across the whole Parkville precinct, I’m really proud we have had over 151,000 patients now who are active with a patient portal, and active means those that have looked at it in the last 12 months. 60 per cent of them log on using the app rather than the website. And we’ve had 1.6 million total logins in the last six months.”

Patients said the top three reasons for them wanting to use the technology is the ability to see their appointments. They also wanted to be able to see their notes and their results and to see them in a timely manner.

They are also wanting to use the technology for communication with their clinicians.

A survey of different age cohorts also showed that contrary to some concerns, older people were more likely to say that sharing information was very helpful to their healthcare. 82 per cent of people in the 55+ group said it was very helpful, while 74 per cent in the 35-54 age group and 78 per cent in the youngest age group also said it was very helpful.

“What we found, and this is from over 2000 patients, is that 70 per cent agree that their technology experience improves their overall health. This is a great outcome. Even better, 86 per cent agree that their technology experience encourages them to more fully participate in their healthcare.

“So what do we know? Patients are ready, consumers are ready, we’re ready as consumers. Patients will tell us their story, even when it’s sensitive information. And by sharing that health information with patients, we’re seeing improvements in shared healthcare ownership.

“Clinicians seem to understand it’s beneficial, but they’re still very cautious about sharing information. And that’s a space where we can do better.”

DHF24: Baret teams up with Teladoc Health’s Solo with Teams virtual care platform

Virtual care platform provider Teladoc Health Australia New Zealand announced at the Digital Health Festival that it had partnered with clinical messaging specialist Baret to integrate their Microsoft Teams-based solutions to support enterprise virtual care.

Baret’s role-based messaging solution for Microsoft Teams, first developed by FiveP in association with Austin Health during the Covid pandemic, has replaced pagers and reduced urgent clinical reviews and non-urgent phone calls at Austin Health.

It is now set to be used for role-based task management, role-based chat groups, and integration with Austin Health’s Oracle Cerner EMR.

Monash Health has also rolled Baret out to its five hospitals.

Teladoc Health says its virtual care platform Solo with Teams is the first clinical and administrative healthcare solution to integrate with Microsoft Teams and the integrated solution will offer hospitals and health systems a comprehensive end-to-end solution for supporting enterprise virtual care.

Teladoc Health Australia and New Zealand commercial consultant Natasha Perry said the integration will simplify and streamline communication by providing multidisciplinary care teams with the tools to collaborate quickly and respond to urgent requests efficiently.

It is especially beneficial for people in regional, rural and remote areas as it’s delivered through the Microsoft Teams platform, meaning patients can receive the same level of care regardless of their geographic location.

Baret has a dynamic directory system that provides care team members with real-time knowledge of who is clocked on based solely on knowing their role, and can automatically route messages based on conditions of availability, location and coverage.

Baret CTO Jane Prowse said virtual care providers are often spread across different locations and traditional methods of finding out who’s doing what, like calling switchboards or checking on-call rosters, don’t work when scaled across multiple healthcare locations.

As both platforms have been built on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, the integration will allow data to flow between systems. The two companies said it would also be highly intuitive for existing Microsoft Teams users.

DHF24: Five Faces launches upgrade to DX5 and Digital Front Door

Digital customer experience solution specialist Five Faces has launched a major upgrade to its DX5 Framework technology and Digital Front Door solution at the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne, featuring a new user interface, end-client configurability and a platform approach.

The DX5 Framework is modern, low-code technology that helps digitise complex patient journeys and is the underlying technology behind all Five Faces’ patient experience solutions, which include digital front door, queue management, visitor management, smart forms, and digital signage.

The Digital Front Door solution allows patients to confirm and change appointments, ask questions, receive reminders and preparation advice, check in and join digital queues, complete digital forms and update details and preferences.

Five Faces first became prominent in healthcare during the COVID pandemic when it rolled out digital solutions like end-to-end vaccination bookings and visitor management to track movement in and out of hospitals, quarantine facilities and airports.

The technology helped Sydney Local Health District handled over 1.85 million vaccinations at its mass vaccination centre.

Five Faces subsequently created the DX5 Framework to provide core solutions that can be configured and deployed rapidly. The modules include a digital front door, task management for staff and consumers, self-check in at kiosks or the consumer’s device, queue management and a real-time dashboard and digital resource library.

It also includes a smart forms builder that allows healthcare organisers to configure their own forms.

Five Faces CEO Nicole Nixon said the length of time it took to roll out solutions during COVID prompted the company to develop the DX5 Framework so solutions can be deployed faster, at a lower cost.

“And we give our customers that agility to be able to do things themselves,” Ms Nixon said. “We’ve built it in such a way that it’s scalable, and it’s configurable by the client. So they can, for example, roll out into one clinic at one hospital and they can scale that across multiple hospitals and multiple clinics.

“They can do that because within the settings of the solution, they’ve got the ability to create their own workflows, their own forms, and they can really create their own personalised view of the solution.”

Ms Nixon said the framework has been built for the whole patient journey, from pre-appointment, the day of appointment and post-appointment. It can be used for pre-admission forms, post-outcome forms, surveys, and for PROMs and PREMs using a drag and drop form builder.

The solution also features a new clean, modern interface. Patients access a secure web application in their browser that provides multi-lingual translation. Employees use a consistent administration portal across all solutions, which simplifies managing complex patient journeys, Ms Nixon said.

“Using a united technology set allows digital health leaders to take a platform approach to patient experience. They can use the DX5 Framework’s broad capabilities to solve many patient pain points across the healthcare system, while easily customising them to the needs of each site, department, model of care, and clinic.”

DHF24: Louise Schaper and George Margelis to helm Pulse, the podcast, launching at Digital Health Festival

Digital health legends Louise Schaper and George Margelis have been revealed as the co-hosts of the new Pulse podcast, launching at the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne this week.

Produced by Pulse+IT, Pulse promises to be a dynamic new voice in digital and data transformation in healthcare, providing listeners with a unique, highly entertaining perspective on the evolving landscape of digital health.

Dr Schaper, former CEO of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, and Dr Margelis, independent chair of the Aged Care Industry IT Council, have decades of experience between them in the healthcare and digital health sectors and will be bringing their comprehensive and unique experiences to the show.

Dr Schaper said listeners can expect engaging discussions, thought-provoking interviews and expert analysis, making Pulse a must-listen for anyone interested in staying informed about the latest trends, challenges and innovations in health data and digital transformation.

“We live in a digital society and in this age of digital transformation, staying informed is crucial for everyone involved in healthcare,” Dr Schaper said. “Pulse aims to be a reliable (and entertaining) source of information and a platform for meaningful conversations about the future of health.”

Dr Margelis said the podcast will take a global perspective on digital transformation and will feature interviews with leading experts, innovators and influencers in the digital health space. It will cover the entire healthcare landscape, from acute care to primary care, aged care to allied health, as well as emerging technologies.

“We’re excited to bring our combined expertise to the forefront and explore the myriad ways in which digital technologies are reshaping the healthcare landscape,” Dr Margelis said. “Pulse is more than a podcast; it’s a journey into the heart of health innovation.”

The duo have opened up their rolodexes and will be calling on global leaders in digital transformation, as well as local expertise. It will also include news bulletins, case studies and insights into real-world examples of digital transformation.

Pulse+IT publisher and managing director Emily Mara said securing such high-profile presenters as Dr Schaper and Dr Margelis was a big coup for the podcast.

“Louise and George are absolute legends in digital health, not just in Australia and New Zealand but around the world,” Ms Mara said. “They are also absolutely hilarious and the podcast could not be helmed by a better, more dynamic duo. We’d like to thank our sponsors Telstra Health, MEDITECH and InterSystems for their great support.”

Pulse the podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with the first episodes launching in the coming weeks. You can follow the podcast via the links on the Pulse page and listen to the trailer here.

Pulse is launching at the Digital Health Festival, being held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre from May 7 to 8. Pulse+IT is a media partner.

DHF24: MediRecords to deploy CSIRO’s Smart Forms for healthcare

Cloud-based healthcare technology vendor MediRecords is deploying CSIRO’s open-source Smart Forms software to develop FHIR-powered forms, questionnaires and assessments for rapid deployment into clinical use.

The initiative will see Smart Forms technology deployed in the MediRecords platform, beginning with a falls risk assessment this month. The assessment has been based on the STRATIFY falls assessment, which offers a structured, evidence-based approach to identifying and addressing patients’ risk of falling.

The plan is to then extend the forms to inpatient admissions and primary care assessments. MediRecords has multidisciplinary teams using its assessment tools, including existing assessments such as the DASS21 and K10.

CSIRO’s Smart Forms technology was commissioned by the Department of Health to improve health assessment procedures and clinical information sharing. It uses a CSIRO form-renderer in conjunction with FHIR questionnaires.

The capability was first demonstrated through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Check Assessment Smart Form.

Smart Forms conform to the HL7 FHIR structured data capture and SMART app launch implementation guides, a standardised approach that facilitates exchange of electronic health information across a diverse range of platforms.

Standardised forms can streamline how clinicians capture patient data and simplify how this data is made available for research and other analysis.

MediRecords integrations lead Sanjeed Quaiyumi said Smart Forms would accelerate the introduction of new health assessments within MediRecords.

“MediRecords is laying the foundations for the adoption of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) in the broader health ecosystem, having developed and implemented an extensive library of FHIR and API resources,” Mr Quaiyumi said.

“Our aim is to provide a growing suite of industry standard assessments, while ultimately assisting clients with a means to develop their own forms.”

The key benefits are interoperability, facilitating seamless data exchange between FHIR-enabled healthcare applications and systems’

The forms are customisable and can be tailored to specific clinical contexts and user needs. Adherence to standardised data formats and coding conventions means consistency in healthcare data representation, he said.

Mr Quaiyumi said said the CSIRO tool means it is much faster to create and upload new questionnaires.

“Our intention is to start with widely used industry assessments and, in future, to expose the FHIR endpoints to clients so they can develop their own custom templates,” he said.

MediRecords will be exhibiting at the Digital Health Festival at the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre on May 7 and 8.