The features were part of the department’s new $133 million national electronic health system that could form the cornerstone of future deployments, its key architects said.
The system will be the “single source of truth” for the health of a personnel that is often stationed in different locations during their career.
The system will be used by 82,000 Defence personnel — 57,000 permanent and 25,000 reserves.
About 30,000 Australian Defence Force members have electronic health records, with the system going live in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Rollout in South Australia has begun, followed by NSW, the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania, with the rollout to be completed by early December.
More than 2000 doctors and specialists will use the e-health platform, which will be hosted at local data centres by CSC Australia, the company responsible for the system.
A Defence spokeswoman said Defence Force members could access appointment information and a summary of their personal health record via the portal.
“This capability is expected to be in place in the first quarter of 2015,” she said.
The spokeswoman said the system was not accessible via mobile applications.
The system is an integrated primary care platform that contains information from a personnel’s GP, dentist, physiotherapy and psychology services.
In future, X-rays and MRIs can be attached to each record or stored by the provider and accessed by the doctor.
“Previously they’ve had paper records and in Defence people move around a lot,” CSC Australia public sector general manager Russell Hatton said.
“No matter where they move to they will have this comprehensive health record that is directly accessible on the internet.”
He said that when a Defence member left active service they could “take their e-health record with them if they wish”.
Defence could load the records on a secure USB key as one option, but the mechanism has yet to be determined. Each personnel will have a digital version of their e-health record alongside their previous paper records when they left, Mr Hatton said.
He said the system had a “powerful analytics component” that would give Defence a long-term view about health trends. Punch in a query of how many people took sick leave during a certain period and the system will spit out the answer.
Drew Wilson, the CSC executive who oversees the Defence account, said the system could identify if bases needed particular training needs.
For now the system can be accessed from anywhere in Australia. It will be deployed at sea and overseas over the next 12 to 18 months.
Edgton Medical Information System provided the core health system, Kellogg Brown and Root did the training and PwC Australia handled change management.
The system was “completely compatible” with the national personally controlled e-health records system, Mr Hatton said.
The health system was initially known as JeHDI or Joint e-health Data and Information System.
Labor earmarked $56m for the project, with CSC winning a five-year contract in 2011 as its leading systems integrator. The cost blowout was due to change management issues, not technology, according to Defence.
Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin’s $800m contract with Defence to consolidate 280 data centres around the nation and overseas into 11 hubs in Australia and three offshore is going full steam ahead.
The eight-year deal is Lockheed Martin’s largest international deal, said Sondra Barbour, its executive vice-president, information systems and global solutions.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Fran Foo
Quelle/Source: The Australian, 23.09.2014
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
