newsGP - New vision for digital health collaboration launched

A new document designed to guide the integration of health technology across different systems is a ‘significant milestone’, the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) says. Its new National Framework for Digital Health Standards aims to address previously limited coordination between healthcare settings. The document covers standardising terminology, building education and workforce capability, and guidance to help accelerate the ‘integration of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and genomics’. Dr Sean Stevens, Chair of RACGP Specific Interests – Digital Health and Innovation, was at this week’s Digital Health Festival in Melbourne where the framework was launched. ‘The recurring request from people, vendors and clinicians alike, is to have interoperability,’ he told newsGP. ‘And if these standards can help, then the whole ecosystem would be happy with that.’ ADHA Chief Executive Amanda Cattermole says the work will support innovation and the ‘seamless integration’ of digital tools. ‘Different organisations have developed and applied standards in isolation, with limited coordination to fit those pieces together across the system,’ she said. ‘The National Framework for Digital Health Standards provides clear, practical guidance and aligns governance, standards development and implementation across government agencies, jurisdictions, health services, partners and industry.’ It comes ahead of a mandate for pathology and diagnostic imaging reports to be shared to My Health Record by default from 1 July. ADHA Chief Digital Officer Peter n said that as these results are increasingly shared, the number of Australians choosing to view this information has grown significantly. In the past year, views have risen from 54 million to 114 million for pathology reports, and from 6.5 million to 11.2 million for diagnostic imaging reports. ‘As mandatory sharing expands to more key health information, scalable and conformant national digital infrastructure becomes critical to safe, reliable information sharing across the health system,’ Mr O’Halloran said. ‘The adoption of globally consistent clinical terminology is a key foundation for the safe and appropriate use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.’ Dr Stevens said My Health Record is now ‘starting to gain some real clinical utility’. ‘If we can have it so that more information ends up there, that hospital discharges all have to go up there, specialist letters – if it’s easy to extract a summary, then I think that’s only going to make the patient journey easier, and make the GP’s workload less, particularly when you’re seeing a new patient,’ he said. He also reported a significant increase in GPs attending the Digital Health Festival, which he believes reflects a growing interest. ‘We’re seeing a lot of the software and hardware vendors wanting to engage with general practice and GPs wanting to have input into how some of these solutions are rolled out,’ he said. ‘This is a great forum for that to happen – that and the Hackathon that we had earlier this year. ‘These health information silos are just counter to good care – the more we can get interoperability of the various systems, the better.’