Implementation partners, including IT companies, will be able to participate in the process in a few key areas, National E-health Transition Authority chief Peter Fleming said.
"We will be looking for implementation partners in the private sector that will work with us as we go through the journey of implementing the unique healthcare identifier program, then the packages such as discharge referral and then the electronic health record," Mr Fleming said.
He declined to go into detail about the tenders, but said "those things are being fleshed out a little bit further with DoHA".
The timing of the tenders would be influenced by the coming federal election, he said.
"I'm also taking advice as to what we can do (with procurement) as we move into election mode," Mr Fleming said.
"If you take the announcements around the electronic health records that it will be available for everyone by 2012, then you can work backwards and say these things need to happen fairly quickly."
Nehta has worked already with IT partners, including Accenture, IBM and CSC, and the tenders would call for many niche technology partners instead of a single systems integrator.
"They're all providing us with different components depending on the skill sets they can bring," Mr Fleming said.
"Accenture has been assisting us with a few things and one of them is security and access framework as we look at what's going to be required into the future."
IBM was helping with authentication systems and CSC in security-related projects, he said.
The department declined to comment on the tenders.
Mr Fleming was happy with Nehta's progress.
"When I joined, the commitment was by July 1 we would have the identifiers in place, and that was delivered," he said.
Unique healthcare identifiers were "created" by Medicare on July 1 for more than 96 per cent of the population.
He accepted that there were multi-faceted challenges in setting up e-health system and vowed to be as transparent as possible. The key to success would be change management.
"We need to make sure that all stakeholders are running down the same path," he said.
According to Medicare, on July 1 it received 36 telephone calls from people asking about their individual healthcare identifier.
The low figure was in line with expectations.
"It is important to note that people will not need to remember their IHI nor obtain a new card," a Medicare spokesman said.
Healthcare professionals would be able to retrieve patients' identifiers using current cards.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Fran Foo
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 13.07.2010
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