"At the moment, we are in the final stages of the production build-out and final verification testing," Andrew Howard told a vendors' webinar on June 27.
"Everything is on track for a successful launch (of the consumer portal and online registration system) over the weekend."
But Mr Howard said plans for the release of the provider portal were not yet settled.
"We're planning for the August timeframe, and those working with us in the test environments and the lead sites are tracking to that," he said.
"Final contracts will be put in place with (the national infrastructure consortium leader) Accenture this week around the specific date for delivery."
Accenture was awarded a $47 million contract to operate the new PCEHR system on June 26 for the two years to June 2014.
Last week, The Australian reported that Accenture had only delivered 40 per cent of a fully workable infrastructure by the July 1 launch date, while a hacking incident that occurred during the system's build late last year was not discovered for four months.
Mr Howard also confirmed that it is still unclear when the National Authentication Service for Health - which provides user verification, security and audit services - will be available from NEHTA's contractor, IBM.
"IBM has not delivered their contractual commitments as of yesterday (June 26), so we are in negotiations with them around a firm date for delivery," he said.
"So the NASH is not there, but we do have an interim solution for software vendors that will be in place for the August release (of the provider portal).
"The Health department has contracted with Medicare Australia to issue a gatekeeper compliant digital certificate which encompasses the NASH requirements for healthcare provider identifiers and healthcare organisation identifiers."
The plan to build the NASH arose from concerns that existing Medicare PKI infrastructure, used for billing and claiming purposes, was not robust enough for a national system transacting confidential medical information.
"A number of vendors have already tested that solution with us in the software testing environment, and we've also written the same sets of code off our reference platform to test the Medicare solution," Mr Howard said.
"So, with respect to secure connectivity to the PCEHR, we're still on schedule for August delivery as well."
But the state and territory governments have requested a one-year deferral on compliance with Healthcare Identifier provider requirements on hospital discharge summaries, as their systems are not ready.
Mr Howard said he would recommend "relaxing that compliance point", so that the jurisdictions can use their existing medical provider numbers.
"We'll still have identifier in there, but it will be a local identifier provided by the jurisdiction, or by a private hospital sending out that discharge summary for probably the first year of operation," he said.
"We've completed a clinical safety review of that requirement, which has come back with a tick (indicating) we can relax that conformance point."
The "consolidated view" functionality for users is still at the starting gate, with the specification not due for publication before August 27.
"We have done all the clinical testing but we're still working through the final stages for publishing so that vendors can get access to the Clinical Document Architecture-related consolidated view," Mr Howard said.
"The Medicare information view will be available in the August release. Again, we need to provide a specification to the market that allows us to consolidate Medicare information into a view that you can also pull into and display in your clinical software.
"We haven't locked down a timeframe for that, we're looking at December but we're trying to draw that back so there's an earlier release."
Mr Howard apologised that NEHTA had not had time to fix connectivity defects in the software testing environment.
"I know that puts some pressure on you as vendors to complete that testing out (for Medicare Notices of Connection) and be in a position to have your software to market for the August release," he said.
"Obviously our priorities this week are focused on getting the production system in place."
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 11.07.2012
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
