Global Health is playing a key role in the Australian Digital Health Agency’s (ADHA) interoperability trials for secure messaging. The trials are a vital step to the healthcare industry becoming fax-free and will see the implementation of scalable integration across participating technology and healthcare providers.
Global Health has a long history of collaboration with other software vendors and believes that it is essential that vendors continue to collaborate effectively to ensure the success of industry-wide interoperability initiatives that benefit health providers as well as their patients.
The ADHA and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) have helped fast-tracked interoperability efforts after listening to key partners in the healthcare industry. Interoperability combined with the secure flow of data between healthcare providers will set the foundation for future improvements in communication within the industry.
Nikki Thrift, Global Health’s General Manager of Connectivity, is excited to see the ADHA highlight secure message exchange as a high priority item.
“It is great to see a definitive focus from both the ADHA and RACGP on the removal of the fax machine from healthcare which parallels with the efforts and achievements of all secure messaging vendors for the past 20 years,” Nikki said.
The ADHA’s latest round of consortiums builds upon existing interoperability efforts between Global Health’s ReferralNet and Telstra Health’s Argus. The volume of messages exchanged between the two software vendors has increased considerably since establishing the collaboration in 2016 and is expected to further increase in the next 6-12 months.
Nikki believes that there are not only are obvious efficiency wins by exchanging information directly from system to system but also direct cost savings for all parties.
“The accountability of being able to track the status of information sent and received far surpasses the redundant capabilities of sending via fax or post,” Nikki said, “and when cost savings are taken into consideration, the secure message exchange is the obvious choice.”
Global Health not only recognises the importance of interoperability but also the need to comply with Australian Privacy Standards. Encryption remains integral to achieving secure messaging for the healthcare sector. ReferralNet Secure Messaging meets all current Australian security and privacy standards and is a key focus whilst participating in the consortiums.
Initial outcomes from the consortiums suggest that there will be significant improvements in the level of interoperability between the main secure messaging platforms and clinical systems. Global Health expects this trend to continue for the remainder of the project and well into the future.
ReferralNet already naturally integrates with Global Health’s existing clinical systems including MasterCare EMR, MasterCare PAS, PrimaryClinic and MasterCare+ for Referral Management.